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6/9/2008

Material Presence

176, London

Material Presence is the fourth exhibition at 176 since the project space opened in September 2007. It will include works by seven young international artists who use found, industrial and pre-fabricated materials to produce immersive works that directly affect the viewer’s senses. Material Presence will feature works drawn solely from the Zabludowicz Collection and will include major installations and a number of sculptures, as well as a massive new commission by Graham Hudson, which will occupy the main hall of the former Methodist Chapel at 176 Prince of Wales Road.

Art works by Buckley, Holme and Hudson act as interchange stations between painting and sculpture, with multiple references to real and abstract space and ruminations on formal properties such as transparency, opacity, colour, shape and line. A combination of formal and emotional undercurrents runs through the works, which will literally inhabit the spaces of 176 in poetic, disturbing, ghostly or uncanny ways. The curatorial approach will highlight both the constructivist heritage that these works draw upon, and the phenomenological impact they can have on the viewer. The impressive scale of the installations will transform the building at 176 into a sequence of powerful experiences. Sound and movement, whether machinic, kinetic or related to moving image, will be important features of these installations, lending them a significant sensory impact. A limited edition publication will be produced for the exhibition with contributions from each of the artists and the curators at 176, designed by Europa, a design studio based in London. Limited edition artworks by a selection of the artists will also be produced.

Information on the artists: Laura Buckley’s installations include a variety of components ranging from constructed plywood structures to coloured Perspex surfaces and film projections. Mechanical movement is an important part of her sculptures, and her films conjure up memories of early modernist experiments in form and motion by László Moholy-Nagy. An idiosyncratic use of light also marks out the work: sleek moving surfaces periodically reflect the beams of Buckley’s projections, creating hotspots and dazzling the viewer.

Myriam Holme’s work can be considered as painting in an expanded field. Working with bamboo, chalk, fabric, glass, thread, wood and paint, her sculptural and painterly language enfolds the visitor in a web of associations both physical and emotional. Graham Hudson will produce an ambitious new commission for the Zabludowicz Collection, responding to the unique physical environment at 176. Hudson’s practice involves sculptural assemblages made from various materials including traditional building stock and found objects, carefully composed in precarious, expressive or humorous ways. As with the other installations in the exhibition, the use of sound and light plays an important role in Hudson’s work.

James Ireland’s work is characterised by a novel take on the tradition of landscape art. Incorporating natural, artificial and industry-standard elements, his sculptures address our understanding of the sublime and the mundane. Ireland’s works highlight an uneasy sympathy between the fragility and beauty of nature and the constructed environment. Alexej Meschtschanow’s sculptures inhabit an uncanny realm in which the everyday is transformed and institutional furniture is reconfigured to take on an anthropomorphic or zoomorphic air. Recognisable signs and objects are reconstructed by the artist and adopt sinister undertones, evoking paradoxical feelings of familiarity and anxiety.

Katja Strunz’s work combines formal geometric elements with experiments in texture, finish and nuanced colour. Her expressive constructions inhabit space in a dramatic way, heightening the visitor’s awareness of his or her environment. Mark Titchner’s major installation When We Build Let Us Think That We Build Forever (2006) includes sound, moving image, light, sculpture and printed fabric in an installation with an imposing material presence. Alluding to Plato’s allegory of the Cave, Titchner’s total environment interweaves references ranging from the Bible to artistic movements such as modernism, surrealism and suprematism, and filmic references such as Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971). The result is a heavily charged symbolic space in which sound and light are used to create a powerful effect on the viewer.

Community Preview 7 September 2 - 4pm
open to the public 11 September – 14 December 2008)

176
176, Prince of Wales Road - London
Opening hours: Thursday & Friday 11am-3pm, Saturday & Sunday 11am-6pm
Admission: Free Entrance

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