DAVI D GATE S AN D H E LE N CAR NAC
Photo: David Gates
David Gates and Helen Carnac are London-based artists who make work both together and independently. David’s work has processing plants. The rightness, balance, and expediency seen in these structures comprise a vernacular, one reflected in D industrial landscapes are close at hand, informing and shaping his work. While David draws on the large scale of structure and f panels use industrial materials as a hand-worked process: prior to firing, scraping and sgraffito and after firing, careful abrading panels are employed as constructional elements, lifting them from the merely decorative. While David still works with precisiontexture and surface structures. Both artists’ works are held in several collections, including: Museum of Art and Design, NY; Racin awarded by King’s College London for his research on the use of language in craft practices. He is a winner of the Jerwood Awa
All photos credited to David Gates
a strong relationship to industrial and agricultural architecture and infrastructure; storage silos, jetties, wharves, and industrial David’s use and adaptation of traditional, deliberate making processes. Working close to the river Thames means that views of form, Helen Carnac is drawn to the patina and shifting colouration and corrosion of metal surfaces. Her vitreous enamelled steel g and grinding. In recent collaborations the pair have developed how their materials and processes are integrated. Enamelled -cut joints and carefully fitted drawers and doors, wooden components, cleft, sawn, and scraped become enabled to reveal their ne Art Museum, WI; Crafts Council, UK; Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo. Both exhibit nationally and internationally. David holds a doctorate ard for Contemporary Makers (2010).
GYC#1, 2018 Elm and Ash, scorched and pigmented, birds eye maple, cedar drawers and vitreous enamel on steel H122 x 54 W x 38 D cm ÂŁ12,600 ex. VAT
GYC#2, 2018 Elm, Ash, Quilted Maple, Cedar of Lebanon, Vitreous Enamel on mild Steel H 135 x W 58.5 x D 42 cm
‘This new work is part of a continuing project that unifies our different materials and ways of making; wood/cabinet-making, and vitreous enamel/metalwork. It also draws together our personal responses to a shared interest in the industrial and agricultural landscapes of places like the Thames estuary through explorations of structure and form, and surface, patina, and decay. The resulting works vary in their obvious function or utility but all share a repertoire that responds to the sense of accidental rightness, balance, and expediency of the architecture we find in our research. The works all combine elements of chance and accident with deliberate, focussed, skilled hand-making. We regularly sift through our fieldwork images, taken largely on coastal and estuarine walks. A group emerged that all featured chanced and improvised juxtapositions of largely balanced rectilinear forms. We did not set out to take this body of photos; it came together over a number of years offering fragmentary and partial information. This coalesced and there are clear visual and formal links to a series of models and drawings made during 2016, and later 2017 that led in the first instance to a cabinet commissioned by a private collector, and subsequently these works; Littoral Chances’. David Gates and Helen Carnac
Littoral Chances I, 2017 Quarter sawn european oak, vitreous enamel on steel, bog oak, ripple sycamore, birds-eye maple, cedar and steel 110 x 74 x 34 cm
ÂŁ15,500 ex. VAT
Littoral Chances II, 2017 Quarter sawn european oak, vitreous enamel on Steel, bog oak, ripple sycamore, birds-eye maple, cedar and steel 110 x 74 x 37 cm ÂŁ17,300 ex. VAT
In a Landscape II, 2017 Vitreous enamel on mild steel, mild steel, European oak, Bog oak. Three parts: 125 x 34 x 35cm; 127 x 37 x 33cm; 142 x 42 x 37cm
£19,600 ex. VAT
At Cliffe II, 2018 Steel, Quarter Sawn European Oak, Bog oak, Maple, Cedar of Lebanon 117 x 45 x 40 cm £9,700 ex. VAT
At Cliffe I, 2017 Floor standing cabinet in Oak, Bog Oak, Maple and Steel, 115 x 49 x 31 cm £8,600 ex. VAT
Wall Cabinet, 2017 Vitreous enamel on steel, Bog oak, Cedar of Lebanon Quarter Sawn European Oak, 70 x 20 x 20 cm £10,000 ex. VAT
Gate’swork is informed by photographic and drawn fieldwork of the industrial landscape. His riverside studio sits in this zone close to the remaining Thames-side wharves and jetties and on the way to the flat landscape of the estuary. His workbench looks across to the cranes, buildings, and conveyors of the Tate & Lyle factory.
Collect 2018 Photo: Sophie Mutevelian
SARAH MYERSCOUGH GALLERY
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