THE STRUCTURE OF THINGS by dalla Rosa Gallery

THE STRUCTURE OF THINGS: GARY COLCLOUGH ALAN MAGEE ANDY WICKS

dalla Rosa Gallery 22.11 - 19.12.2013

dalla Rosa Gallery | 121 Clerkenwell Road | London EC1R 5BY | dallarosagallery.com

Andy Wicks, Plane Sight series (2012), print on canvas in resin, and ink on polyester, 35.5 x 25.5 cm each

THE STRUCTURE OF THINGS: Gary Colclough, Alan Magee, and Andy Wicks 22 November – 19 December 2013 The Structure of Things is a group exhibition by London-based artists Gary Colclough, Alan Magee, and Andy Wicks, bringing together sculpture, video, and drawing. The show builds on the artists’ dialogue and views on what structure can be, whether imagined or real and tested. The result is a collection of images and objects which reflect the artists’ close relationship with medium, with an emphasis on wood. Alan Magee employs video to document the repeated collapse of a table and chair, almost echoing a childhood game with a destabilising twist. In Andy Wicks’ work references to wooden mooring structures are abstracted into diagrammatic images, whilst Gary Colclough’s geometric wooden structures take on a subtle functionality becoming a supporting frame for hand-drawn images. The structures in the exhibition are transformed, presented, and represented through a process of knowing labour; time is invested and the hand is employed into frameworks of value and production. The intricate construction of Gary Colclough’s sculptures draw on references to Arts & Craft furniture, esoteric geometry and early optical contraptions. Using a pared down sculptural language, Colclough’s meticulously built structures both suspend and frame hand-drawn images. These monochrome images are painstakingly rendered in coloured pencil, recalling early natural history illustrations but inscribed with an apocalyptic presence. Examining the history of pictorial landscape Colclough unsettles the viewer’s experience through duplication and separation, drawing attention to the experience and mechanics of seeing itself. Combining moving image and sculpture Alan Magee’s work playfully explores the nature and potential of the domestic object and his ability to affect it. Through a series of transformations the same object loses and regains function, with action and context. Magee develops a kind of existentialism of labour, as he attempts to find a place in the world through his working process. The title of his sculpture, Over and Over Again, pessimistically draws reference to a Sisyphean struggle, yet also optimistically celebrates the potential within the objects materiality. There are shades of the otherworldly in the paintings of Andy Wicks. The form and patina of real world equivalents are represented in a painterly tribute with use of heavy flax or raw polyester.

The Plane Sight series sees man-made forms stripped of any recognisable feature. Instead a reductive line traces the very essence of the structure, creating an image more akin to a primitive language or architectural blueprint. Each drawn image is combined with chaotic eddies of paint, suggestive of galactic swirls, bringing with them an impossibility of scale. For further information contact hello@dallarosagallery.com All installation photos by Philip John Jones. opposite: Gary Colclough, Garden Ruin (2011), coloured pencil, paper, mirror, and wood, 44 x 18 x 16 cm

Installation view of The Structure of Things at dalla Rosa. left: Gary Colclough, still being still (2013), coloured pencil, paper and wood, 52 x 35 x 147.5 cm right: Alan Magee, Over and Over Again (2013), table, chair, carbon fibre, steel, high tensile cables, DVD & projector, dimensions variable next page: Alan Magee, stills from Over and Over Again (2013)

Alan Magee, Andy Wicks and Gary Colclough in conversation Andy Wicks: Could this be described as a sculpture show? Alan Magee: It’s interesting to think of it that way since there are only two actual sculptures in the gallery, but quantity is obviously not the issue here. We are talking about content - it’s what the works are doing rather than how they came about. AW: Yes. I think so. AM: So when you look around the show, and despite our respective personal drives and

motivations, there is an overwhelming sense of sculpture in the works themselves. And despite the fact that the majority of the work is two dimensional we find ourselves drawing on a sculptural lexicon when talking about the show as a whole; hence the title The Structure of Things. AW: You emphasized the word sculpture? AM: The reason I said sculpture in that way is because I feel it is only dealing with some elements of sculpture. For example the work seems to be confronting notions of space, structure and gravity, but not necessarily weight - in the traditional sense. Nothing feels heavy or bulky. Even in the work Over and Over Again the effects of gravity have been usurped; in the video there are domestic objects that are doing things they shouldn’t. Gary Colclough: And in your drawings there’s also a sense of suspension or space operating in a different way. AM: Obviously in my drawings there is a direct investigation into space, structure and stability.

The fact that these are common objects perhaps gives the work a sense of the uncanny. However, while I’m referencing real physical objects, the view points presented in the images can only be experienced in two dimensions – digital or analogue. In that sense it is a sculptural

investigation that is only possible in a non-gravitational world; where we can be under things, see through things and inhabit positions that are not possible. In this way the two-dimensional and three-dimensional properties are codependent on each other. But this image/object relationship occurs throughout the show. GC: I think this is in part because many of the works in the show draw on those elements of drawing and sculpture that are analogous to each other. AW: Your sculptural works in particular, seem to naturally oscillate between the two. GC: Yes, I guess I deal with this relationship more directly then you or Alan, and the relationship between the drawn image and the sculptural object is pretty much in the DNA of my work, running through nearly everything I do. AW: Yours and Alan’s sculptures contain an image and an object where each defines the other. What do you think about the relationship between these works? GC: Despite that similarity, I see the relationship between still, being, still and Over and Over Again as one of unlikely bedfellows that surprisingly get along. Their titles alone almost set them up as opposites, one a quiet, unmoving presence and the other a perpetual cycle of endings. What interests and surprises me most about their relationship is the subtle identity their interaction lends to the space they inhabit. In different ways, they make the viewer aware of their own physicality in front of the work, and define a domestic characteristic of the space. AW: I guess this is in large part because of the references to furniture…

GC: Yes definitely, in my work I think of that as a subtle reference but when it’s in proximity to Alan’s piece that association is amplified. I’m also trying to engage with the viewers awareness of their presence by foregrounding the experience of looking. AW: Because the sculptures put the images on display? GC: Exactly, and because of how they are constructed and poised - they are quite delicate and the legs encroach outwards so a certain amount of awareness is required to navigate them physically. In a way I’m attempting to the put the image/object dynamic on display. I’m interested in how we look at things, and specifically how we look at, and understand landscape. So in still, being, still I explore the fictional potential of a mirrored image, of a seemingly idyllic view across a lake, with the actuality of how the images are encountered. AM: Andy, your works also give us mediated experiences of landscapes, or would it be more accurate to say of objects mediated from the landscape? AW: I like the idea that these works act as an intermediate between landscape and isolated object, or sculpture in this discussion. There is a dualism within these works, firstly through the employment of the diptych format and secondly through the abstraction/reduction and separation of ground and foreground. Interestingly your work and Gary’s also have a sense of duality. Gary plays with the double image through altered tones or within a reflection, and in your piece Over and Over Again we see a projection of a collapsing table and chair in front of the same objects, this time static and fixed, almost as if the video is a premonition. AM: There are elements of abstraction/reduction in both your works, but your diptychs really seem to be aware of their own making process, with particular attention to skill and craftsmanship. AW: Yes true. In my practice whatever form the work takes, it has a tight and considered aesthetic; even if it’s quiet there’s confidence in its construction. I feel the Plane Sight works are a good indicator of this; even though there is little evidence of the hand of the artist within the ‘image’, the supporting elements of the piece, the unprimed polyester, the glaze and the stretching of the canvas are all highly considered. GC: The phrase “supporting elements” suggests an ordering or a hierarchy within the work. AW: In this instance I’m referring to the physical painting support, the canvas and stretcher to contain the ‘image’. That said the choice of raw polyester and the application of resin are as much a conscious act as the application of the ink. However I have used the idea of ordering literally in Stack, which is an archive consisting of 60 drawings of the various structures taken from each piece I’ve made over the past few years. It’s presented chronologically as a stack of paper bound to the wall by nuts and bolts for the audience to browse, but as an archive it almost subverts what those works were doing as it re-homologizes the objects.

GC: This makes me think of the stacking process that also exists in Alan’s drawings, which creates a hierarchy determined by the sizes of domestic objects. AM: Yes, in this way I have removed the original function-orientated hierarchy, and replaced it with a purely structural one. With much of my work, I am questioning our relationship to the objects in our home: what they do for us, and what we do for them. In a political sense I see changing the preordained use of things as an act of self-empowerment. GC: Do you think this need for self-empowerment is a new thing? AM: Not new, but different. I feel a sense of powerlessness as an individual in an increasingly corporate world. There is a lack of ‘real’ control-options, so in much of my work I’m merging Arendt’s ideas of Labor and Action - as the only real control we have is in the home. (London, November 2013)

previous page: Gary Colclough, still being still (2013), coloured pencil, paper and wood, 52 x 35 x 147.5 cm this page: Alan Magee, The Structure of Things #3 and #2 (2013), pen on paper, 33 x 33 cm opposite page: Alan Magee, The Structure of Things #1, detail (2013), pen and paper, 33 x 33 cm

GARY COLCLOUGH Education 2008- 2009 1996- 1999

MA Fine Art, Central Saint Martins, London

BA Hons Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art, London

Solo Exhibitions 2011 Anderswo, Smallspace Gallery, Berlin 2009 Glimpsed, 24Seven, Gooden Gallery, London 2009 Crossing, Basement 43, London Two Person Exhibitions 2011 Encounter, (with Hannah Brown) Gallery Primo Alonso, London 2010 On Becoming a Gallery, Part Two, (with Frances Richardson) Angus-Hughes Gallery, curated by Fieldgate Gallery, London 2010 two sides of the same plain (with Amy Stephens) Stour Space, London Group Exhibitions 2013 The Structure of Things, dalla Rosa Gallery, London Jerwood Drawing Prize, Jerwood Space, London Works on Paper, PayneShurvell at Collective Gallery, London The Fine Line, Identity Gallery, Hong Kong Discernable, Zeitgeist Arts Projects, London At the Edges, Angus-Hughes Gallery, London 2012 Earth Works, P.P.O.W. New York Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London Nature, Vegas, London Alter, Vegas, London There Was a Country Where They Were All Thieves, (curated by Natasha Ginwala) Jeanine Hofland Contemporary Art, Amsterdam 2011 Escape, Sumarria Lunn, London Collection No 1.Interior and the Collectors, Lyon Pulp Fictions,Transition Gallery, London Strip, Transition Gallery at Sluice Art Fair, London Wolfson Syndrome, The Modern Language Experiment, London Creekside Open, A.P.T. Gallery, London (selected by Phyllida Barlow) In Arcadia, IMT, London 2010 Tomorrow People, Elevator Gallery, London God is in the Details, Primo Alonso, London Miniscule, Oblong Gallery, London 2009 Sehnsucht, Transition Gallery at JTG Project 09 Artsway Open 09, Artsway, Sway, Hampshire M.A. Contemporary Arts Show, Atkinson Gallery, Somerset Arctic Fox, Vulpes, Vulpes, London

Gary Colclough, still being still (2013, detail), coloured pencil, paper and wood, 52 x 35 x 147.5 cm

2008 2007 2006 2005

Pandamonium, (Powerball Event), The Power Plant, Toronto The Joy, Nettie Horn, London Monstrous Tales, A.P.T. Gallery, London Mostyn Open, Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales I-d, Chapel Gallery, Ormskirk Baby youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re out of time, Unit 15, London

Curatorial Projects 2011 Common Logic, IMT Gallery, London (co-curated with Kate Terry) Rana Bagum, Ian Monroe, Amy Stephens, Kate Terry and Amy Yoes Publications and Press 2013 At the Edges, Exhibition catalogue (click here to download the catalogue, including essay by Graham Crowley) Review of At the Edges, a-n Interface (link to review) Jerwood Drawing Prize, Exhibition catalogue 2011 What is an Art Book? (Contributor) Published by The Modern Language Experiment Wolfson Syndrome, Exhibition catalogue, The Modern Language Experiment, London

ALAN MAGEE Alan Magee trained as a fine artist at the Dublin Institute of Technology. He holds an MA Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art, London, where he is also currently lecturing. Selected Exhibitions 2013 The Structure of Things, dalla Rosa Gallery, London PLOT POINT, Swiss Church, London ‘I where a dress’, curated by Sasha Burkhanova, High Holborn, London Gapfill: more beauty, more happines, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda (solo show) Open Cube, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, White Cube - Mason’s Yard, London Founding Phant, Ormston House Gallery, Limerick City ‘...even CLOUDS...’ curated by Keran James & Michael Keenan, Studio 1.1, London Discernible, Bond House Project Space, London 2012 Petite enveloppe urbaine, Banner Repeater, London ALTER, Vegas Gallery, London Endogenous, Maria Stenfors Gallery, London System Of Objects, Departure Foundation, London ‘... and all shall have prizes... ‘, Studio 1.1, Shoreditch, London Agents of change, Studio 1.1, Shoreditch, London (solo show) Ideas in Motion: A survey of contemporary video and film, Milton Gallery, London 2011 What is an Art Book? curated by The Modern Language Experiment, The Mews Project Space, & Sluice Art fair, London Our Lives as Things, Occupy Space, Limerick, Ireland (solo show) The Florence Trust, curated by Paul Bayley, London, UK 2010 Liverpool Rd Est Project, London Framing Motion, Moves 10, Liverpool, UK 2009 Projected Weekends, The Digital Hub, Dublin The Drawing Salon, The Mews Project Space, London Visual Deflections, curated by Katherine Nolan, Old Truman Brewery, London Moving Image, Synch Festival, Athens, Greece /Seconds, Online Publication, curated by Nooshin Farhid Catch my Drift, Barge House, OXO Tower, London 2008 Sculpture in Context, The National Botanic Gardens, Dublin Culture Night, Temple Bar, Dublin Reality in two Tones, Galleria Jakubska, Praha 1, Czech Rep 2007 Fetish in a Box, Triskel Arts Centre,Cork, Ireland Jelgava Ice Sculpture Symposium, Jelgava, Latvia 2006 Unknown Capitals, Budapest, Prague, Paris & Seoul Sculpture in context, The National Botanical Gardens, Dublin Fresh Re-imagining the collection, LCGA, Limerick Jelgava Ice Sculpture Symposium, Jelgava, Latvia 2005 Moore St Lending Library, Dublin Fringe Festival, Dublin EV+A, Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA), Limerick

Grants & Awards ERDF New Creative Markets Programme with Space Studios Florence Trust Studio Residency Irish Arts Council Training Grant Irish Arts Council Travel & Mobility Award Wicklow Arts Office Grant Dublin City Arts Office Grant Cultural Relations Committee (CRC) - Bursary Jelgava International Ice Sculpture Competition - 1st Prize International Ice-sculpture Festival, Russia - Masters Prize Dublin Institute of Technology - John Creagh Award

Alan Magee, still from Over and Over Again (2013)

ANDY WICKS Exhibitions 2013 The Structure of Things, dalla Rosa Gallery, London 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008

The Doldrums, OMT Gallery, Enclave, London (solo show) Discernible, Zeitgeist Project Space, London Beached (Commissioned site-specific public work), WW Gallery Patio Projects, London Prophetic Diagrams, George and Jorgen, London Petite Enveloppe Urbaine, Banner Repeater, London Painting Versus Object, Standpoint Gallery, London Sluice 2012, Hanmi Gallery, London Microcosm, Departure Foundation, Leeds Past and Present, OMT Gallery, Enclave, London New Talkings (3 person show), Netil House, London Collectible, Zeitgeist Project Space, London The London Art Fair, Business Design Centre, London Crash Open, Charlie Dutton Gallery Florence Trust Summer Exhibition, London Fade Away, Gallery North, Newcastle Upon Tyne Fade Away, Transition Gallery, London Superunknown, Edel Assanti, London (curator) Police & Thieves, The Old Police Station, London The Middle of Nowhere: Objects and Actions in the Abyss, Departure Gallery, London Tag: From 3 to 36. New London Painting, Brown, London ULTRAMEGAOK, The Framery, London Postcard Show 2009, Surface Gallery, Nottingham Chiaroscuro, Ada Street Gallery, London New Paintings (2 man show), The Empire, London

Residencies 2013 (July - August) OMT Gallery, Enclave, London 2010-11 The Florence Trust, London Publications 2013 The Doldrums 2012 Petite Enveloppe Urbaine 2011 Florence Trust Catalogue About Painting (Fade Away Catalogue), Transition Editions 2008 Chiaroscuro Catalogue, Fingerprint Communications Marmite Prize Catalogue, Susak Press Education 2004-6 BA (Hons) Fine Art Middlesex University, London 2003-4 B-TEC Diploma in Art & Design Ravensbourne College, Kent

Collections The Commonwealth Club

Private Collections UK, Italy, Greece. As part of Petite Enveloppe Urbaine publication held in collections of - Artexte, The Banff Centre’s Paul D. Fleck Library and Archive, la Biblothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec, The Canadian Center for Architecture, The National Gallery of Canada Grants 2012-3

European Regional Development Fund - New Creative Markets Programme with Space Studios

Press 2010 2009

Painting as Prophecy - Superunknown interview, Celia White, Edel Assanti Blog ULTRAMEGAOK review, Murmur Art

Andy Wicks, Plane Sight I (2012), print on canvas in resin, and ink on polyester, 35.5 x 25.5 cm each