23/1/2003
Emporium
Domo Baal, London
Emporium is a collaboration between two artists, Cathie Pilkington and Pat O'Connor, who each perform the combined roles of artist, collector and curator. A rich visual spectacle set in a Regency town house. It aims to bury and confuse its venue under ornament and curios, recreating it as church hall jumble sale or fairground sideshow.
private view : Friday 24th January 6-9pm.
open : Fridays and Saturdays 12 noon until 6 pm, and at other times by appointment.
Emporium is a collaboration between two artists who each perform the combined roles of artist, collector and curator. A rich visual spectacle set in a Regency town house. It aims to bury and confuse its venue under ornament and curios, recreating it as church hall jumble sale or fairground sideshow.
Image: Homunculus (detail) by Cathie Pilkington, Jesmonite and oil paint, 85 cm tall. © 2002
Cathie Pilkington and Pat O'Connor have curated their found and homespun objets d'art into almost every niche of Domo Baal's stately residence with a 'randomness' which allows them to move between artworks and other paraphernalia. This heteronymous space is subject to shifting and uncertain conventions of engagement and spectatorship. Dodgy carpet and gaffer tape runs down the neo-classical stairwell whilst the intelligible architecture is interrupted with decorated screens, ribbon curtains and distorting mirrors. Within this, familiar divisions between public and private, formal and intimate made and found are merged and confused. The hushed museum segues into a stage set which feels like a living room, which might be the venue for a boot sale. The viewer is invited to browse, contemplate judge or consume, or all or none of these. In places participation is suggested but not permitted. You can speculate on the Tombola but you can't play it.
Amongst the glittering parerga and crowded objects masquerading as under-cherished trestle trash, are sculpture-like and painting-like works. Cathie Pilkington's tableaux of strange children and animals are intensively hand-made, assisted ready-mades which inhabit the space in a way that is simultaneously absorbing and estranging whilst Pat O'Connor's paintings are bijou vignettes and ornaments, which compress life-loads of desiccated desire and heartache into tiny spaces.
Cathie Pilkington has shown most recently in It's a Wonderful Life at the apartment, Athens, Greece in 2001, Short Stories, at the Galway Arts Centre, Ireland, in 2001, and For the Love of Dog, at the Pump House, Battersea, London also in 2001. Forthcoming projects include exhibitions at the Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, and Model Arts and Niland Centre, Sligo, Ireland. Pat O'Connor is currently showing in Miniatures at Raid Projects Gallery, Los Angeles, USA, which will tour further to Kyubidou Gallery, Tokyo, Japan in 2003. Her most recent solo exhibition: Loving You was in 2001 at Perugiarte Contemporanea, Padova, Italy. She also had work in Tattoo Show at Modern Art, London in 2001.
Next exhibition : 'A Reader' Lucy Harrison, Sharon Kivland and Nina Papaconstantinou, 08/03/03- 12/04/03
domobaal contemporary art
3 John Street London WC1 N 2ES
T 020 724293604
F 020 78310122