BEAUHEMIA
6 JULY -
12 AUGUST
Kate Street, Debbie Lawson, Antti Laitinen, Annie Attridge, Mike
Newton, Rebecca Taber, Bjorn Veno, Hektor Mamet, Eduard Bigas and Saul
Zanolari;
and special performance by Mark McGowan on the opening night.
VIEW WORK
NETTIE
HORN proudly presents BEAUHEMIA, the inaugural exhibition at
our new premises on Vyner Street, and featuring work by the gallery’s
artists - displaying a broad spectrum of characteristics that are at
once beautiful, sometimes decadent, and occasionally foreboding. The
works in this exhibition explore themes surrounding the loss of and
search for identity and meaning in our post-modern society; a personal
conflict which often overlays with current political, cultural and psychological
climates. Each artist is concerned with the conception of identity,
and how it is played out in the modern world, often to conflicting ends
- resulting in the creation of autonomous spaces where identity and
personal ethos collide within a staged mise-en-scene. Some deal with
these notions of identity and meaning by creating emotive and narrative
pieces addressing themes of melancholia or personal conflict, while
others have a more idiosyncratic approach, lacing their works with humour
and absurdity.
Debbie Lawson, Wild
Thing II, 2006, Wood veneers on board, 243 x 152 cm
Street's
series Little Death comprises six flower wreaths in which the
component elements interweave and dovetail with a decadent and stylish
manner into a luscious yet repulsive mise-en-scene; on closer inspection,
the overall sculpture begins to play with our most basic insecurities
and discomforts. Street's practice deals with the search for meaning
through communication and language - playing on words and familiar sayings
to create dark yet romantic sculptures tinged with a tongue in cheek
approach to the human condition.
Laitinen documents each of his performances in intricate and humorous
detail and becomes the staged enactment of his vision of Finnish identity
through role-play; using explicit and esoteric cultural imagery set
in a context of nature and culture. Laitinen's idiosyncratic approach
lends a new perspective as well as a universal aspect of humour to his
performances, a humour that arises from a meeting between impossible
and incommensurate elements.
Lawson's sculptures and inlaid panels lewdly depict conflict and seduction.
There is a sense of domestic psychodrama in her sculptures, where often
disparate household objects collide with each other or explode, creating
a sort of animated hybrid form. Her panels resemble episodes in a picaresque
narrative, exploring the psychological landscape of the domestic interior
as they gradually unfold to reveal strange truths about the world through
a series of needless misadventures.
Attridge's extravagant and exuberant sculptures are reminiscent of an
outrageous yet engaging spectacle set in a fictive classical era. The
immediate grunginess of her work almost belies the numerous subtleties
contained within its structure. Attridge's sculptures are like perverse
desserts - ice creams scooped out in the shape of breasts - and yet
reflecting a refreshing cheek imbued with sensitivity.
Veno's body of work Sirkel provided an arena where he could
break down cultural and personal constraints through a form of performance,
which takes inspiration from surrealist, automated writing - creating
contradictions such as the distinction between the dreams and aspirations
of his child self, and the realities of being a man in modern society.
Newton's oil paintings explore aspects of melancholia and nostalgia
imbued with an evident cinematic influence. The emotional state of melancholia
in his painting is surrounded with the halo of the sublime and yet deals
with issues of ennui, ritual, role-play, stereotypes and confusion about
identity. His paintings are evocative of snapped scenes extracted from
a film noir in which an unsettling and unnerving mood transpires.
Mamet's playful and inquisitive approach
to objects reveals an artist concerned with a fascination for our responses
to the useless. These once functional objects are rendered useless and
their identity and purpose become questionable. Whether we respond with
humour or frustration, Mamet's assisted ready-made's refute our notions
of value, and at the same time insist upon a reappraisal in completely
different terms- those of our passions, emotions and perceptions.
In Bigas's paintings there is a core sense of valuation for simplicity,
balance and beauty. Against a continual lightness, bizarre dreamlike
forms weave and interact, suspended in a perpetual and distinct rhythm.
Combining a spontaneous and automatic directness with an accomplished
eye for balance, Bigas calls forth an eclectic medley of imagination,
intuition and feeling.
Taber's works touch on the stark directness, the brutality, of the transitory
moment, effectively drawing out the unrefined seams of emotional memory
that remain with us like scars throughout our lives- which Taber calls
"souvenirs" - bonding us directly to our history, and to each
other. Her work utilises a careful layering of both figurative and abstract
elements, utilising both automatic techniques and careful study.
Zanolari's digitally remastered images offers a surreal two-dimensional
wax museum where the subject is stripped down and remodelled into a
caricatured persona reflecting the universal and fundamental questions
of identity, nature and angst through paradoxes and metaphors. Zanolari
uses his subjects as a pretext to deal with more specific issues and
concepts.
© NETTIE HORN |