Two exhibitions
dal 12/9/2012 al 10/11/2012
Segnalato da
12/9/2012
Two exhibitions
Parasol Unit, London
The exhibition of Bharti Kher is composed of a selection of works from the recent past, with an emphasis on the artist's sculptural works; her work often explores the notion of the self as a multiple. The fourth Exposure Award celebrates the work of art school graduates: Lulu MacDonald, Sean Steadman and Dante Rendle Traynor.
Bharti Kher
13 September - 11 November 2012
Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art is delighted to present works by Bharti Kher in her first solo exhibition held in a public art institution in London. The exhibition is composed of a selection of works from the recent past, with an emphasis on the artist’s sculptural works.
Known for her extensive use of everyday, found objects and imaginatively transforming their identity, Kher empowers her often otherworldly creations to present themselves unabashedly as if they were a natural part of our culture and environment. Kher’s work often explores the notion of the self as a multiple, open to interpretation and shape-shifting. Her art practice is intimately intertwined with her life, not only because she borrows motifs and artefacts for her work, but also because she has an inquisitive mind and a strong desire to understand sociological issues. Such characteristics endow Kher’s work with a narrative quality and fascinating interiority of things that frequently contradict her practice of addressing more global and collective concerns. This tension is precisely what leads us more deeply into Kher’s work and world and prompts us to reposition our own relationship to her individual pieces.
Bharti Kher, born 1969 in London, England, now lives and works in New Delhi, India.
The exhibition at Parasol unit is accompanied by a comprehensive publication that includes several insightful essays by Ziba Ardalan, Gayatri Sinha, and Tom Morton, alongside an interview with writer Aveek Sen. The publication will be distributed internationally.
The exhibition and publication has been kindly supported by:
Priya & Cyrus Vandrevala
Jolana and Petri Vainio
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Lulu MacDonald, Sean Steadman and Dante Rendle Traynor
Exposure 12 Award
13 September - 14 October 2012
Now in its fourth year, EXPOSURE Award has gained increasing recognition for giving winning graduates from a UK art school the opportunity to exhibit work in a professional context. Showing alongside Bharti Kher, the main exhibition at Parasol unit, and coinciding with Frieze Art Fair, the winners of EXPOSURE 12 Award benefit from exposure to an international audience.
Lulu MacDonald (BFA in Fine Art) Lulu’s installations evoke misremembered or destroyed ambits, tactile fantasies of the city’s edges and surfaces. These subconscious and subliminal landscapes evolve from a close reading of discourse and neuroses surrounding the condition of the city. At its centre lies the female explorer as stunted agent attempting a re-positioning of the urban dialogue – a re-defining that would allow her to continue beyond the given borders.
Sean Steadman (BA Hons in Fine Art) Sean’s work exposes the conflicted permutations and anxieties of authenticity in culture, with reference to the role of the image. Making figurative paintings, Sean switches from computer modelling to analogue mark-making; this provisional source material is transcribed and collated onto the canvas using a projector. Adopting a cohesive and synthetic way of constructing paintings, Sean explores how themes such as authorship, collage and depth of field endure a coercively influential existence through branding ideology, advertising and graphic design.
Dante Rendle Traynor (BA Hons in Fine Art) Dante Rendle Traynor’s Show explores the presence of intense anxiety in the slip from the hyper-meaningful to the excruciatingly meaningless. Arbitrarily set in a desperate and dystopian art-world, a network of skeletal characters and dysfunctional relationships rapidly form and dissolve among a landscape of inanimate and semi-animate objects, stream-of-consciousness babble, and hammy technical choreography. The bearded and babyish protagonist is a skeletal and desperate character himself: the artist and curator (he thinks) of this exhibition-within-an-exhibition.
The judging panel for EXPOSURE 12 Award was comprised of Professor Susan Collins, Professor of Fine Art and Director of the Slade School of Fine Art; Andrew Stahl, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Head of Undergraduate Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art; and Ziba Ardalan, Director/Curator of Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art.
About EXPOSURE Award
The annual EXPOSURE Award celebrates the work of art school graduates and gives them an opportunity to exhibit their work to an international audience. Each year Parasol unit selects three winning artists from a UK art school. The judging panel selects three graduates, who are invited to present a month-long exhibition at Parasol unit. Winners of EXPOSURE 09 were Sonny Sanjay Vadgama, Mark Dennis and Chris Gomersall of Central St Martins. Winners of EXPOSURE 10 were Leah Capaldi, Kate Liston and Lea Provenzano, of the Royal College of Art. Winners of EXPOSURE 11 were Jack Friswell, Kate Shepherd and Rebecca Turner, all graduates of Wimbledon College of Art. In 2012 Parasol unit has been delighted to collaborate with Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.
Image: Bharti Kher, 'The skin speaks a language not its own', 2006. Bindis on fibreglass Life size, 142 x 456.2 x 195 cm (56 x 179½ x 76¾ in). Private collection, Switzerland. Photography: Bartholomew/Netphotograph. © Bharti Kher
Press contact
Nicola Pomery on 020 7490 7373, at nicola@parasol-unit.org
Exhibition previews: 13 September, 6:30–9pm
Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art
14 Wharf Road, London, N1 7RW
Opening hours:
Mondays by prior arrangement
Tuesday–Saturday, 10–6pm
Sundays, 12–5pm
First Thursday of every month, until 9pm
Extended opening hours during Frieze Art Fair, 2012:
Monday 10 October, 10–6pm
Saturday 13 October, 10–9pm
Admission free