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25/2/2009

Two solo shows

White Cube, London

White Cube Hoxton Square is pleased to present 'White Riot', an exhibition of new work by the British artist Marcus Harvey.

Harvey is best known for his infamous portrait of Myra Hindley, which came to prominence in the 'Sensation' exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (1997). His new relief, 'Maggie', seeks to be no less powerful or provocative, acting as the centrepiece of 'White Riot', a title taken from the 1977 debut single by punk band The Clash - released two years before Margaret Thatcher became the first female British Prime Minister. Harvey's large-scale black and white portrait is based on a famous photograph of Thatcher taken at the launch of the 1987 Tory Party election manifesto. It is composed of over 15,000 plaster-cast objects ranging from vegetables to sex toys; these individual elements refer both directly and indirectly to aspects of the former Prime Minister's perceived media profile, evident femininity and background as a grocer's daughter from Grantham. 'Maggie' can therefore be read both as the portrait of an individual and as a map of British history, identity and change, both prior to and during the height of Thatcher's period in power. Harvey further remarks that 'Thatcher's image has a magnetic, dark, complicated sexual allure that's hard for me to define - it's not exactly feminine and it does come with a pungent whiff of testosterone'.

Alongside 'Maggie', Harvey will present three monumental bronze sculptures. 'Victoria', a deflated 1960's football, suggests bygone World Cup glory. 'Nike', a winged WWII helmet resting on rifle barrels, forms a classical parody of military heroism. 'The Lord High Admiral' is modelled on the statue of Sir Winston Churchill situated in London's Parliament Square that was vandalised in the 1990's by Poll Tax rioters, who added a slice of grass turf, providing him with a green Mohican. Harvey says of the vandalised statue: 'It has become a new icon, not a cartoon. I grew up as part of the punk generation, and rather than serving to satirise Churchill, the Mohican gives ownership to that generation and underlines his own reputation as someone who stood aside from the establishment.'

Harvey's commentary on the construction of British social and cultural identity is explored further in two paintings: one depicts the mythical figure of Britannia and the other the emblematic white cliffs of Dover. 'Britannia' is a tondo portraying the former symbol of the British Empire in a contemporary guise. The sitter in Harvey's painting has undergone a mastectomy and her portrayal suggests a defiant image of national and sexual power challenged by the frailty of the human condition. In the second panoramic painting, titled 'Albion', stark and menacing cliffs rise up from dark, choppy waters. Based on a photograph taken by the artist, the painting presents, in his own words, 'an objectified view of one of the enduring icons of British identity - Old Blighty'. The unifying theme of the entire exhibition is made clear - namely an exploration and celebration of both British and English cultural identity.

Marcus Harvey was born in Leeds in 1963 and he lives and works in London. Since his first exhibition at White Cube, Duke Street (1994) he has had solo exhibitions at Galleria Marabini, Milan (2008), Galleria Marabini Bologna, (2005 and 2007), Galleria Mimmo Scognamiglio, Naples (2005) and Mary Boone Gallery, New York (2002). Group Exhibitions include 'You Dig the Tunnel, I'll Hide the Soil', White Cube Hoxton Square (2008) and 'In the darkest hour there may be light: Works from Damien Hirst's murderme collection', Serpentine Gallery, London (2006). In 2004, Harvey co-founded and continues to edit the magazine 'Turps Banana' which produces two issues a year. It is a publication devoted to painting and is written by painters. (www.turpsbanana.com).

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White Cube Hoxton Square is pleased to present 'The Descent', the first exhibition with the gallery by the British artist Rachel Kneebone. Working in white porcelain, Kneebone has intricately modelled her largest sculpture to date, pushing her technical mastery of the medium beyond anything she has previously achieved.

There is a theatricality in Kneebone's work which, as curator Vincent Honoré has commented, serves as 'a strategy that enables her to use and displace the traditional concept of the avant-garde art work as the integrated, autonomous and privileged locus of aesthetic knowledge'. Nowhere is this theatricality more apparent than in 'The Descent', an epic staging of her extraordinary vision, a bacchanalia of hybrid figures falling into an abyss.

For Kneebone, 'The Descent' explores fear in 'an attempt to access the state through making an equivalent in beauty'. In the process of developing this idea, she drew upon a number of influences, from the spiritual journeys imagined by Dante in 'The Divine Comedy' (c.1308-1321) and the father and son of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel 'The Road' (2006), to the menacing performance of Robert Mitchum as the maniacal preacher in the film 'The Night of the Hunter' (1955). Art historical sources include the drama of Poussin's 'The Deluge' (1660-1664), Delacroix's 'Liberty Leading the People' (1830) through to Courbet's 'The Origin of the World' (1866).

'The Descent's' structure loosely echoes the tiers of Dante's 'Inferno'. Kneebone stretches her narrative around the internal curvilinear walls of the sculpture, thereby inviting the viewer to navigate around it as one would a medieval carving, a plaster cast frieze or an inverted triumphal column. The introductory rubric, in this case the figures peering over the edge, sets a tone of peril mixed with heightened sexuality, as they contemplate what lies before them.

Drawing on Bataille's vision of an organic excess or fusion between the erotic and the sacred, tumbling figures cascade toward a giant orifice at the pit of 'The Descent', there to be reborn, or sucked into their final demise. In the upper circles, figures lie forlorn or crawl along the edges while some, reflecting Dante's description of the damned as 'connoisseurs of gluttony, greed and promiscuity', squat against the ledge to devour and excrete. Below these Kneebone describes her 'Fuselian nightmare - a beast violating any natural order of form, a gland-tipped vine with horse legs'. These chaotic hybrids issue forth plant-like tendrils with limbs that create a pulsating backdrop against which the experience of isolated descent is played out.

Rachel Kneebone was born in 1973 in Oxfordshire; she lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include 'Arrivals 2004' selected by Majorie Allthorpe-Guyton, Arts Council, London, 'The Way We Work' at Camden Arts Centre, London (2005), Madder Rose Gallery, London (2006), 'Mario Testino at home', Yvon Lambert, New York (2007), 'An Archaeology.' Project Space 176, London (2007) and 'Summer Exhibition', Royal Academy of Arts, London (2008). In 2005, Kneebone was nominated for the MaxMara Art Prize and in the same year she was commissioned by Mario Testino to make work for his 'Diana, Princess of Wales' exhibition at Kensington Palace.

Image: Marcus Harvey

White Cube
48 Hoxton Square - London
Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm
Free admission

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