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21/1/2009

No End In Sight

Vegas Gallery, London

Curated by Simon Willems

Vegas Gallery is pleased to present No end in sight, a touring group project, which brings together six artists from the UK and Ireland, following its first instalment at Galerie Polaris, Paris, in the summer of 2008.

Exploring notions of the transformative and the totemic, the exhibition presents an ambiguous exchange of ideas which hinge on the internalisation of symbolic codes to create meaning. Outmoded beliefs and symbols are resuscitated in the wake of burgeoning sub-cultures and groups that wish to safeguard against contemporary living. The work presented heralds a slow delivery of ideas that acknowledge vulnerability as a central concern in this interchange between culture and nature. Both material and mental, this ‘threat’ ultimately shakes us out of the delusion of immortality – pervasive in a Western culture obsessed with sanitised representation.

Despite each artist having a distinctly individual practice, the commonality that connects the work is the use of these key motifs in developing their respective discourses. Craft informs both methodical pragmatism and historical genre, acting less as a divisive tool in terms of contemporary debate, but more as a logical way to proceed.

Ailbhe Ni Bhriain

The videos of Ailbhe Ni Bhriain set out to interrupt the ‘believable’ space of the image, displacing our perception of place and creating a dialogue between internal and external states. A strategic undoing is at play, creating shifts in the visual register and a tension between surface and depth. The works are meditations on familiarity and otherness and question our relationship to place and the image. The truth associated with photography and video is revealed as a construction and thus transformed into a painterly illusion. Ailbhe Ni Bhriain is represented by Domo Baal.

Annabel Elgar

The photographs of Annabel Elgar explore themes of ‘outsiderdom’ and social recoil. Details become covert signifiers, offering us narrative pointers and a time-base that creates a space at the margins – outside the continuum of day-to-day functioning. Peppered with cropped figures, fires and totemic symbols, we are also made aware in her work of ritualistic behavior and the allusion towards cult and secrecy.

Max Hymes

The sculpture of Max Hymes embraces an eclectic mix of British Folk Art and Arts & Crafts aesthetics, incorporating wicker and beadwork, with more recent inventions. They could suggest relics from the past or strange contemporary signs of our struggle to characterize our relationship to nature. The beaded animal head that projects out from the wall is rendered part trophy, part ornament, as we confront the question - is it a familiar beast or something more sinister in which an object has been removed from its ceremonial context. Max Hymes is represented by Pippy Houldsworth.

Adam Thompson

A range of motifs is evident in Adam Thompson’s practice: miniature landscape constructions, treated photographs, interventions into the physical structure of the gallery itself. Thompson operates across a range of technical fields, adopting or adapting his material in accordance with the various issues he wishes to address. Recurring elements include the miniaturisation and manipulation of landscape (both actual and imagined places), the recontextualisation of found objects, and the masking or complete obliteration of chosen elements. This focus forces attention upon the tiny, the overlooked and the hidden but essential details of a place, attitude, conceit or presentation.

Richard Wathen

Richard Wathen’s paintings draw inspiration from a variety of art historical periods, mixed with disguised, self-fashioned autobiographic references. Although he appears to adopt the vernacular of portraiture, the artist intentionally distorts anatomic details in order to redefine his subjects’ personhood and to apply the Cubists’ idea of multiple viewpoints to time. Each image seems familiar but for Wathen the portraits have a psychological charge. Moreover, the relationship of his figures with animals, in particular rabbits, refer to vulnerability – the person who holds the rabbit holds protectiveness and control, love and complacency – and our insecurities. Wathen’s paintings leak their meaning slowly, creating time structures that have been set up within anachronism and compression. Richard Wathen is represented by Max Wigram Gallery, London.

Simon Willems

The paintings and drawings of Simon Willems dissect images and ideas that tug on the distinction between mental and physical realities. More particularly, he explores those that support the delusions of false comfort within the very contemporary vulnerability of individual belief and purpose. The work is anchored on the collapse of personal utopias through the cultural and religious indoctrination, which informs these ideals. These tend to fall into areas that revolve around a particular cliché or familiar idea, or which more surreally confront the viewer with complex psychological states.

Image: Adam Thompson

Opening jan 22, 2008

Vegas Gallery
64 Redchurch Street - London
Open Wednesday-Saturday 12.00-18.00
Free admission

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