WW SOLO Award: GROUP 2012 catalogue (web version) by WW Contemporary Art

WW SOLO Award

GROUP 2012 An exhibition of 37 artists longlisted for the WW SOLO Award 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 25 August 2012 WW Gallery, London

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Foreword Debra Wilson & Chiara Williams WW Gallery is pleased to present GROUP 2012, an exhibition presenting the long-list for the inaugural WW SOLO Award. Unlike other contemporary art awards WW offers a structured opportunity for artists working at all stages of their career. With a focus that stretches further than new graduates, WW believes that artists can be ‘emerging’ at any age. From over 1200 entries by 300 artists, a longlist of 37 artists has been selected for exhibition and they are all presented in this catalogue.

A distinguished panel of judges, including Sheila McGregor (Chief Executive, Axis, the online resource for contemporary art), Helen Sumpter (Art writer and Deputy Visual Art Editor of Time Out London), Kate Davis (Artist & Tutor in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art) and Deb Covell (Artist & Co-founder Platform-A Gallery, Middlesbrough) further short-listed six artists whose names were revealed at the opening of GROUP 2012. Our congratulations go to Emma Cousin, Calum James Crowther, Dexter Dymoke, Jonathan Gabb, Wendy Nelson and

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Elly Thomas, who all greatly impressed the judges with both their exhibited work and their ongoing practice. The shortlisted artists will each be commissioned to create a new limited edition work for WW Gallery. The overall winner is announced on the 25th August and will receive prize money of £1000, a flexible three month residency from October to December 2012, a solo show in January 2013 and a solo exhibition catalogue.

Additionally, visitors to GROUP 2012 were encouraged to vote for their favourite work in the show. The winner of this vote will also be announced on the 25th August and will also be commissioned to produce a limited edition work. Finally, we’d like to thank the judges for their time and commitment to the Award, Anne Lander for catalogue design and layout, Francesca Brooks for compiling and editing the text and finally thanks to all the artists for their exceptional work.

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

The Award Prize money £1000 Solo exhibition in January 2013 3 month residency Oct – Dec 2012 Commissions for short-listed artists and winner of visitors’ vote The WW SOLO Award provides £1000 prize money and a beautiful, large, skylit studio for a three-month period leading up to a one-month solo exhibition. It is intended that the residency will accommodate and support the production of new work (including site-specific or large-scale) for the winning artist’s solo show. The Award is intended to be flexible, supportive and responsive to the winning artist’s other commitments and the gallery directors will

offer support, mentoring and advice as needed throughout the residency period. It is hoped that the SOLO Award winner will participate in a programme of talks and discussions with the gallery directors and gallery visitors. WW is one of London’s leading contemporary artist-led spaces with a reputation for consistently forwardthinking and innovative projects, with sites in Clerkenwell and Hackney.

“It has been a pleasure to help select work for this exhibition in one of the most consistently thoughtful, enterprising and generous new London galleries. The show uncovered such a range of interesting work from artists all over the UK and I very much look forward to seeing what comes of the winner’s residency with WW Gallery.” – Sheila McGregor

Selection Panel Sheila McGregor | Chief Executive, Axis, the online resource for contemporary art Helen Sumpter | Art writer and Deputy Visual Art Editor of Time Out London Kate Davis | Artist & Tutor in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art Deb Covell | Artist & Co-founder Platform-A Gallery, Middlesbrough

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

“The standard of the work was particularly high and it was a pleasure to be one of the judges for the first WW SOLO award.” – Deb Covell

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

The Short-list Emma Cousin | Calum James Crowther Dexter Dymoke | Jonathan Gabb Wendy Nelson | Elly Thomas

Today The Last Matous Regained The Feline Paradise, 2012 Oil, acrylic, spray paint on canvas, 94 x 107cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Tristam Aver In a digital age where the use of technology increasingly affects how we view, interact with, and respond to, our environment, Tristam Aver’s interest lies in examining the volume of visual information we are bombarded with on a daily basis. Collating his sources from the vast library of other people’s images, that is the internet, Aver works with a mash-up of data and references which are chosen for their compositional and pictorial potential. His aim is to capture and identify a hybrid, ‘sampled’ view of the world which imitates the implosion of data on the human eye. By recording the stimuli we are exposed to on a daily basis, Aver attempts to create a singular, stimulating new language through paint. By sampling common figurative, historical, cultural and commercial iconography (pinup girls, Staffordshire Terriers, typography, textiles, motifs from graphic design and art historical elements, amongst others) and re-analysing their original context and meaning, the forms take on a new momentum when translated to the canvas. The process of applying paint becomes tantamount to the evolution of the imagery; acting as data does in a computer programme, paint can be subject to distortion, repetition, compression and corruption as each layer is applied, resulting in recognisable and chimeric forms that fit uncomfortably in the real world. Using heavily applied paints and through the distortion of many pictorial references, Aver presents the finished canvas as an overloaded composition; a new product of the information-overload of the digital age.

Fragile Blue Scattered, 2010 Oil on canvas, 61 x 61cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Alison Bickmore For Alison Bickmore a painting can change radically many times before it is resolved, leading to a process which stretches over many months. Her process of editing by removal and reinstatement has a filmic quality. Through an overlapping and layering of marks, imagery and meaning, Bickmore hopes to create work which transcends a specific location in time or space. The final image bears the traces of its momentary past lives; a painting comes to represent a form of time-travel for the imagination with which Bickmore aims to introduce a sense of the personal-imaginative. In the fragile and pressured process of transferring the object onto the surface of the canvas the form is subject to a change which produces an unknown quantity. A residue of the former “object” remains through contact with the human form but lies just beyond our identification. Layers of erased paint become a metaphor for time and memory. A catalogue of monograms is left over in the overlapping and layering of marks. Bickmore’s paintings become suggestive surfaces in which we might read the story of our own emotions and personal history or try to identify with that of the artist.

WoodCut, 2012

Ink, spray paint, and acrylic on carved wood, 33 x 25cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Catrine Bodum Tiefenstaffelung: depth gradation, tonal depth Catrine Bodum works with a process based on colour and composition in abstract painting. Although she works from ideas she does not begin with a set plan or a fixed image. The piece begins laid out on the floor and using very fluid paints (acrylic, ink and oil) she is able to work from all sides, with no angle offering an obvious orientation. From this awkward view point she can never be entirely certain of what the painting will look like until it is finished. In Bodum’s work the atmospheric qualities of music are recreated in the abstract interaction of form and colour in an attempt to evoke an internal space for the viewer, such as sound or smell might affect. Arising from a dialogue with the work of musician Steve Reich and poet Robert Lax, Catrine Bodum works with the idea of repetition, exploring the construction of a visual space rendered unstable as a result of this repetition. For Reich and Lax repetition and the layering of tonal elements allowed the listener to build up depth and the sense of a landscape. The repetitions are not continuous but are broken up and interrupted continually, becoming more like the movement of car blinkers or lights along road constructions which shift in and out of sync; they blink in unison, then bit by bit they break out of it, then they blink in opposition before returning to blink in unison. This repeats itself in a continual cycle of tangibility and intangibility.

Mora (film still), 2012 Video, 4â&#x20AC;?24

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Sara Brannan Sara Brannan’s work is about gendered spectatorship and female identification in cinema. Using films in the public domain, Brannan identifies and singles out the female ‘lead’ character. Only footage of the female isolated in the frame is used. The rest of the film is removed and the images are edited together to run consecutively following the chronological order of the original film. All sound is removed apart from this character’s voice. This re-editing interrupts the patriarchal narrative structure and makes visible the usually invisible editing that is demanded by realism. Brannan’s work seeks to challenge the idea that cinema puts forward a particular ideological construct of reality, rather than reflecting its true nature. The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line. The woman is on display, to be looked at and to provoke rather than represent. She functions as an erotic object on two levels: for the characters within the screen story, and for the spectator within the auditorium, the tension shifting between the looks directed from either side of the film. By removing the male protagonist Brannan transfers the gaze solely to the spectator, which intensifies our own scopohilic position. The female character is left looking passive, vulnerable and unstable.

Salon, 2011

Oil on canvas, 190 x 200cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Max Cahn The paintings of Max Cahn welcome a sense of reality through perspective and with suggestions of landscape, architecture, and virtual 3D computer worlds, yet they simultaneously resist this impression with agitated abstracted elements. They break through this reality, forcing cracks in it by reminding us of the physicality of paint. This physicality is invoked with thick wet on wet impastos that are alive with spontaneous dynamic brush strokes, and paint which is sticky and viscous. Cahn’s practice is influenced by psychedelic culture and surrealism as well as Sci-Fi. His paintings often present a dual-dimensional experience, somewhere between object and hallucinated vision. An identification of subject seems frustratingly out of reach and yet the viewer is placated by the aesthetic qualities of painting. Salon is part of a body of work looking at structures which resemble tables, bed and platforms. These timeless yet contemporary objects with which man has always been familiar for many years, can easily be misconstrued and fall into abstract forms. They emerge as uncanny, recognisable yet alien, in Cahn’s work. It is at this point that the paintings become platforms for exploring psychological states and the semi-autobiographical.

Love Sunday, 2012

Oil and varnish on board, 15 x 30cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Emma Cousin Emma Cousin thinks through her materials, striving to instill the energy of the medium in her painting in a celebration of the unexpected. Cousin is interested in how mundane objects become marvelous when painted. Her process involves painting until something new is revealed about the common object. Estranged from its context the object asserts its making and sits firmly in the present. It becomes a sculptural solid structure that just is. Using the tension of an abstract image rooted in the figurative, Cousin makes paintings to preserve and pervert what is wonderful in the simple and everyday. Her subjects are like some fragment of a lost world – peg, pineapple or mince – they are disposable, simple and disregarded. These objects are rooted in our cultural identity with a very human casualness; there will be another famous face tomorrow, pineapples can be purchased for just a pound, and mince is so cheap it can be found in everyone’s freezer. These objects resonate with the need to consume as driven by human desires. With paint Cousin has set these objects up as totems. Why do we collect and display things? The static ornament is useless but precious. Minced meat is economically functional yet uniquely visceral. The newspaper Dictator is forgotten by tomorrow. Cousin looks to question what these figureheads and symbols represent and at what stage a recognition of their value becomes subverted and can be transformed through paint.

She Had Absolutely No Idea What He Really Did, 2012

Photograph, ilford silk gallerie print backed on aluminium, 118 x 66cm, ed. 1 of 10

WW SOLO Awardâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; |â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Group 2012

Calum James Crowther Calum James Crowther attempts to combine his fascination with film and narrative painting in the construction of single large-scale photographs. He is particularly interested in developing and establishing protagonists within these to create an enhanced view of the world. Through the realization of backstories and motivations, he aims to make these personalities as real as possible in order for the viewer to be able to empathize with their situation. These narratives reveal themselves slowly, thus creating ambiguities which are both accidental and deliberate. The absence of protagonists is an attempt to escape the problem of subjectivity, and the rooms are left to tell their own stories. Crowther designs and makes all of the sets in his photographs, each one a unique creation to compliment the narrative subtleties of every concept. To further deepen these worlds, individual props are made which vary from a portrait in the style of Victorian paintings, to new beers, motor oils and whiskeys, with labels in the style of 1960s brands and vintage-look bottles and cans. Crowther is intrigued by the difficulty the absence of the fourth wall in staged photography creates for the audience in the suspension of their disbelief. In his work he plays with these problems by setting the scene in the past, heightening the sense of a paused narrative. His photographs feel as though they are set in an immediate post-war Britain, which enables the creation of imagery with a particularly heightened dynamic. Crowther employs photography and digital manipulation as a means of exploring narratives that reveal truths about human behaviour, particularly the more mysterious and darker aspects of society.

Holding â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 069.04.12, 2012

Gelatin Silver Print, 76 x 95 cm, ed. 2 of 5 (hand printed by the artist)

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Jolanta Dolewska Jolanta Dolewska’s aim is to engage with the image on a purely visual level, investigating surface and form, presence and absence in an abstraction of reality. Her gaze is continually deflected back or slips downwards, at other times sucked into revealing little, consistently presenting her with a challenge. What lies beneath? For the viewer the question might be, why am I being presented with this image? Jolanta’s photographs force us to look closer in order to examine the basic qualities of form and tone, reminding us that beauty doesn’t always lie in grand perspectives. The attentiveness and rigidness of the process within which Dolewska works, corresponds to the physical and psychological structures she is exploring. The mechanical eye of the camera follows the proscribed instructions of the photographer in almost every case. But every so often in the case of an accident, the machine surpasses itself and reveals its own limits. Dolewska uses photography in her practice because of an interest in the inevitable paradox of the medium; regardless of the degree to which representational integrity is distorted, it carries a residual trace of the phenomenal world. Photography forces us to move back and forth between the real and false, belief and doubt. Being thrown between these poles both inspires and stimulates Dolewska’s work by bringing her back to the basics of her existence; the material, real, physical, tangible.

Impress Me, 2012

Oil on linen, 30 x 30cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Alexandra Dudley Alexandra Dudley’s work is ultimately an investigation into the vulnerability of the human condition in which she explores the fragility of the body and psyche. Drawing on personal experiences of her own hospitalisation, and both bodily and mental malfunctions, Alexandra Dudley works on the basis of the idea that the core of something has been disrupted. In Dudley’s practice the canvases are treated as bodies which she can affect or make an impact upon. Touch and reaction are crucial elements in the application of paint. The paint acts as a kind of flesh or skin which Dudley treats as something that can be warped, moved around, pushed, teased, squeezed, pinched, damaged and disrupted. The outcomes also explore the question of ‘objecthood’. There is a certain ‘thingness’ and sculptural quality to the work; the ‘sculptures’ are bi-products of the behaviour of the paint. The works reveal evidence of their own making, presenting unclean painterly edges bursting out from beyond the confinement of the canvas, drawing attention to the frames as productive forces. These are objects, yet the exposure of the bare linen serves as a reminder that what we are seeing is painting. Chance plays an important part in the work, Dudley is continually responding to the unpredictability of the paint in her interaction with it. The making of the paintings is a process of elimination as much as it is one of presentation. Dudley aims to push past abstraction to create a literal presence, one that is suggestive of the body, both its perishability and sensory experiences, and which manifests instability.

Rail, 2011

Oak, aluminium, 37 x 55 x 6cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Dexter Dymoke “We can understand, then, how thinking about the image might require something like opening up a logic....For the world of images – if we can call it a world; let`s say instead: the unfolding, the rain of stars of singular images – never offers its objects to us as terms in a logic susceptible of being expressed as propositions, true or false, correct or incorrect. What does this mean? That everything eludes us? Not at all. Even a rain of stars has its structure.” (From Confronting Images: Georges Didi-Huberman. Penn State Press. 2005). Working in a classic sculptural idiom Dexter Dymoke engages with a discrete but rigorous conceptual enquiry into the symbolic and metaphoric role of various materials, examining interrelational aspects with unexpected results. Form, texture, and image are all deployed without prejudice in a restless exploration. Dymoke’s current preoccupation is in developing an approach which makes a reconciliation of image and form in sculpture possible. Whilst a “narrative” paradoxically deploys linear constraints of storytelling within a limitless (if necessary) complexity of means, the complexity of “image” is bound up in the moment of presentation, and in the status and drama of the reveal. Imagery is an undeniable element of sculpture at a retinal level, but Dymoke strives to go beyond this to discover the possibilities of revelation offered by sculpture. In Dymoke’s practice this entails an acknowledgement of all that is not available to us in being, all that, by the nature of our limitations, we cannot know. What can make potent sense in a sculpture does so in ways which are not reducible, “to any fixed signification or order of the signified” (Jean-Luc Nancy), but does so by heeding the unfamiliar. Dymoke’s unusual and often humorous composition and juxtaposition of materials offer the possibility of disclosure through the subversion of the familiar.

The Birth (video still), 2012

Single channel video with sound, 1 min 18 secs, ed of 5

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Kate Elliott Much of Kate Elliott’s work is preoccupied with a search for identity and belonging. She makes an investigation into the breakdown of conventionalised forms of representation. In particular, Elliott tries to deconstruct traditional ways of looking at femininity and masculinity in order to question the boundaries of gender identity and our ideas surrounding self-representation. With a background in photography, Elliott has begun to incorporate video into her practice over the past few years. She is interested in exploring the relationship between the two mediums, and how they can be used to differing effects. Elliott uses videos to explore memories and thoughts. Through capturing them on camera, these fleeting and often transient ideas, take on a sense of permanence. Using single continuous shots, and minimal editing, the raw aesthetic in the videos references the experimental and avant-garde film-making of the 1960s and 70s and its relation to the Feminist movement, which expressed the strong conviction that identity is not authentic but rather a construct of society. Through her work, Kate Elliott aims to celebrate the multiple and mutable nature of human identity in a subtle yet challenging way. Powerful and riveting, The Birth, is a video which feels compellingly familiar and yet convincingly universal.

Cage, 2012

Digital C-print, 40 x 30 in

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Gabriela Fabrowska It is hard to be down when you are up. Gabriela Fabrowska’s series is a work in progress. It contemplates air and water, the eternal and omnipresent elements in the essential barebones of the landscape. The meeting of elements and the urban setting are principle themes. Out of exasperation and frustration with the restrictions on spatial freedom in the commotion of the city, Gabriela Fabrowska looks for places which invite us to remain calm and offer an opportunity to enjoy space and solitude. These spaces are sometimes high up above street level ; giving rise to the series title, it is hard to be down when you are up. The work is inspired by a meditative sense of eternity and motionless in the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto and mountaineering. Her photographs capture and conjure a moment of calm, absorbing enough to momentarily take us out of the surrounding reality. Underlying this conceptual preoccupation is the exploration of the materiality of the photographic process. This exploration is carried out through work with negative and in a search for tactile printmaking methods. Fabrowska’s practice returns to an increasingly obsolete set of practices in an evocation of photography’s material origins. Choosing this method over the ephemeral nature of digital photography, she ultimately defies the illusory perfection of the photographic print.

Untitled (Hera), 2012

Plywood, bolts, silver leaf, 300 x 21 x 100cm, ed. 1 of 3

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Susan Forsyth Susan Forsyth’s work explores sculpture-making processes and the feminine monumental. The simple geometric forms of industrial sheet materials are balanced in the gallery or landscape in an unconventional play on traditional or expected monuments. Based on the golden ratio and A4 rectangles, the forms are gilded using traditional craft processes and suggest a link to the ‘no-space’ of Byzantine painting. The titles of the works are chosen to generate playful narratives for the abstract forms, and require us to think intellectually as well as conceptually about what is before us. With Untitled (Hera) the grand scale and silver-burnished surface all echo classical sculpture. The subtitled name, Hera, roots the sculpture in classical Greek mythology continuing in a classical lexicon that has been recognised and validated for thousands of years. Yet the spare abstraction and the basic material masked by the glint of silver all defy our expectations and force us to make a re-evaluation. The sculpture looms above us, a towering presence in the gallery space, but is it grand enough to impress us? And how exactly does this industrial material form relate to a conception of woman?

Se.quinced: colour + white (detail), 2012

Acrylic paint and mixed media, 310 x 100 x 120cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Jonathan Gabb Jonathan Gabb’s current works explore the notions of the abstract through a particular development in the use of acrylic paint. In exploring the question of how to make an abstract contemporary expressionist work, Gabb has developed his practice in an attempt to resolve the impossible; the use of paint as an object rather than as a material. There is a transformative possibility in this particular method which moves beyond the traditional constructs of painting practice. Working within the parameters of process art, Gabb has moved into the realms of a sculptural casting method whereby the layers of paint are plasticized and cast, preserving their liquid qualities and allowing new applications and new possibilities to be imagined. His aim in the development of these works is to challenge the confines of painting practice by approaching the medium as if he were foreign to it and alien to its ‘rules’. Gabb is aiming to capture the material quality of paint and echo its application in a three dimensional form. His site-specific installations are all a result of this reinvention of the rules and conventions of painting. Jonathan Gabb’s decision to use paint in this way creates a discipline beyond formal concerns such as composition and colour. Weight and gravity also inform the work, which must necessarily interact with the space the piece inhabits. The results are beautiful showers of colour which draw the viewer in closer so that they can begin to understand the depth of the artist’s relationship with paint.

Sling, 2012

Millinery hat block, latex fabric, brass eyelet & hook, 26 x 54 x 27 cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Sarah Gillham Through the assemblage of objects, fabrics and imagery, Sarah Gillham’s work explores the displaced and replaced body as a conveyer of meaning and metaphor. The bodies in her work are often incomplete parts of the full human form which have been furnished and decorated; limbs are replaced with mirrors, horns, chair arms, lampshades or remade from old blankets and lavish fabrics. They can be read as replacements for the missing body parts, and as outward markers for desire, loss, awkwardness, empowerment and sexuality. These sensual forms often risk being comical expressions of the awkward relationship between the self-conscious body and a wish to be the object of desire. The displaced body parts can be read as mementos, akin to the Victorian tradition of keeping a lock of hair or a model hand of a deceased loved one. Gillham preserves and reanimates these parts by entering them into a fresh relationship with everyday cast-off objects. Voids, portholes and openings appear in her work as mirrors, black holes, negative space and rips in furniture and clothing. As with Alice’s looking glass these openings beckon the viewer to peer inside. Sometimes these openings are central core images which can be read as an active and powerful symbol of female identity. Their intention is to swallow up the viewer and re-engage them in their primitive beginnings.

Continuous Movement â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Construction 4, 2010 Collage, 34 x 38cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Mark Harris Mark Harris’ current research is primarily concerned with the printed image and the journey it makes from original source, to mass reproduction and over time, to obscurity. Preferring materials which are fifty, sixty and even seventy years old, the materials employed by Harris retain palpable signs of their age; worn corners, creases, grease from fingerprints, glue and dust marks. It is often the revisiting of waste materials, sometimes end papers, corners and book covers, which provide the richest media for him to work with. Harris has recently incorporated books that have been withdrawn from libraries and identified through their lending systems as unpopular or outdated, into his practice. Harris’s work is a form of aesthetic recycling in which these books become sources to edit, re-categorize and collage with. Some of these collages are then translated back into the print process either as small editions or on mass through commercial processes, raising questions of value and the worth associated with image and process. The global architectural visions of Superstudio’s Continuous Monument, Constant Nieuwenhuys New Babylon and Paul Virilio’s Bunker Archaeology and Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne project are all influences in Mark Harris’ collages and the constructions depicting architectural interventions in the landscape. These ruins, or defenses, present a vision of past histories and possible futures which reflect upon ideas of abandonment and regeneration.

Ms Lomax, 2012,

Oil on oak panel, 10 x 15cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Kirsty Harris Kirsty Harris’ miniature paintings explore an on-going engagement with different aspects of the history of portraiture. The laborious process of layering and glazing, coupled with the aphotic backgrounds in Harris’ paintings make a gentle nod towards 17th century Dutch paintings, whereas the poses and surroundings draw from a wider art historical context. Harris has been painting in miniature for over 10 years and often employs a magnifying glass for the finer details. She is interested in how the chosen scale can reify her paintings, in the way an icon gains a higher symbolic value, in an attempt to draw the audience in close. Kirsty Harris predominantly works from real subjects, sketching and photographing them in poses sourced from historical paintings, before isolating the figures. This current body of work involves characters who are clothed only in their underwear and forms a development of a previous series which embodied people wearing different disguises, masks, and actual clowns. There is uncertainty and ambiguity in her paintings. An indeterminate source of light shines brightly on the figure, bleaching out her defining features while an elongated neck rises from her pregnant form. The paradoxical intimacy and anonymity of her paintings create a sense of mystery which captivates and intrigues the viewer.

A Second on the Lips â&#x20AC;Ś, 2011

Nylon jersey, polyester padding, stitching, hair, quilting, hoop, 48cm diameter hoop x 30cm fabric drop

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Sally Hewett Sally Hewett’s practice centres around ideas of beauty and ugliness and the conventions which determine our definitions of each. Notions of beauty from Aristotle onwards have emphasised symmetry, proportion, and harmony, but Hewett is interested in picking apart and holding up these arbitrary and inherited definitions of perfection to scrutiny. Working mainly with fabrics and using hand stitching, embroidery, upholstery and toy-making techniques, Hewett is also concerned with the social and political history of stitching and embroidery. Hewett’s interest lies in how we see things and how we interpret what we see. Her particular way of representing bodies, using fabrics and stitching, isolating body parts in quilting hoops, ultimately affects how the content of her work is seen. With the evident humour that underlies her tactile representations of flesh, Hewett challenges the viewer to make a judgement about whether what we see is ugly, disgusting, beautiful, or erotic. In some of her more recent work Hewett has been looking at plastic surgery, implants, and the use of fillers, amongst other contemporary physical ‘improvements’. Analysing the desire to change anything which fails to comply with the conventional ideal, i.e. large noses, small breasts, fat bellies and bottoms, stretch marks, and body hair, Hewett makes a playful yet powerful case for real, corporeal bodies in an age where we seem increasingly disgusted with our own flesh.

Thinking of Evil

Mixed medium on paper (mounted on archive board) 24 x 29cm.

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Andrew Litten Andrew Litten works on the basis that if art is about stimulating emotions that have relevance to our social and emotive behaviours, then the disturbance of any proscribed creative processes or languages is essential in order for unadulterated expression and engagement to be achieved. As a figurative painter representing the human form, the manipulation of materials and the manipulation of identity are intrinsically linked in Litten’s practice. Sometimes subversive, tender, malevolent, and compassionate, at the heart of it all is a sense of pure expression, which is neither political, demographic, nor defined by taste. Litten uses paint as a highly malleable image-creating medium which is able to capture subtle and often violent shifts in identity. His paintings of single figures represent people in highly charged states of emotional flux which have the potential to be powerfully affecting. The instability of the brush strokes in Litten’s painting becomes an incredibly expressive vessel for the emotional narratives of the figures depicted. Litten finds creativity empowering and empathy powerful, and it is the need to reveal and witness raw human existence which drives his practice forward.

Deracination (film still), 2011 Audio Visual, 2min 38secs,

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Ope Lori Ope Lori engages in an image making practice which looks at the politics of the gaze and within this, the power relations of black and white women in visual representations. Within these ‘frames’ of representation, (frames denoting not just a border or case for enclosing, but rather a structure for admitting) from media images, film, TV and imagined spaces, Lori looks at how gender is negotiated and projected onto the two bodies. Examining, more specifically, how femininity is encoded onto one body rather than the other, as a result and as a mark of race. Within this historical framework, and due to the ramifications of imperialism, the white woman has been posited as the feminine and the spectacular, while the black woman has been presented as the unfeminine and the non-spectacular, when juxtaposed against one another in a single image, particularly in Western visual culture. Through the juxtaposition of these two bodies at play, using lens based media (video and photography), Ope Lori works to create an oppositional gaze. This gaze not only critiques the gendered politics of looking, but in doing so, thinks about who these images are designed to give pleasure to? Lori attempts to open up the space for feminine identities and to free both black and white women from their fixed positions, giving them autonomy under the operations of skin. Lori’s practice is political. Through using strategies of inversion, appropriation, re-appropriation, code making and breaking, she is creating new ways of seeing black female bodies with a primary focus on our Western culture.

A: Hollywood Tease/Half Zip Princess 2012 Latex Rubber, Dimensions variable ed. of 3

B: Untitled (Romeo Encore in 3 pieces), 2012 Cast Aluminium, dimensions variable

WW SOLO Awardâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; |â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Group 2012

Roman Manfredi Roman Manfrediâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s practice sits at the interface between print, sculpture, moving image and projection. Altered contextual dialogues are sought by using methods and materials grounded within their own language but taken out of their intended purpose. By utilizing cultural reference points such as signage, early European cinema and car fetishism, Manfredi examines and regenerates underlying themes of loss and desire. Evocative surfaces which function simultaneously as both alluring and disturbing elements, allow meaning to be subverted and new contexts to come into play. Manfredi reveals subtext in a variety of media and techniques, facilitated by incorporating minimalist elements; simple shapes and effects encompass a number of interrelated components. Found objects and traditionally laboured art objects interact with the use of positive and negative space, forming relationships between the figurative and the abstract.

Harvest, 2012

Acrylic on MDF panel, 30 x 40cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Lee Marshall At the core of Lee Marshall’s practice lies a fascination with painting. Marshall is interested in paint’s ability to both describe and obscure, to exist as image on canvas and object on wall, and in its paradoxical states and operative methods. The uncertainty about the status of painting in today’s image and informationsaturated societies generates a certain anxiety, but also creates a space in which painting can undergo an almost unlimited number of permutations. Marshall’s work is an attempt to reconfigure painting’s tropes and clichés in order to better understand what it could and should be. What is seen in each of Marshall’s paintings is rarely a solid reality; it may relate to something actual or remind you of something actual, but the mechanics of painting provide a sense of tangibility and the picture-plane gives a contextual grounding. “It’s just paint applied with various techniques,” and yet we read depth, form, and texture. Marshall’s practice is an attempt to figure out if this is a deception on painting’s part, a revelation of its true nature, or something more benign which merely encourages the suspension of disbelief and our willing participation in an illusion. Each scenario depicted within Marshall’s work is a virtual construct, much like computer graphics, or perhaps more akin to a passive viewing experience of a CGI film. The painting can only do so much to entertain, it lacks animation and the onus is therefore on the viewer to activate the painting (both visually and mentally).

The Doll, 2011

Oil on canvas, 76 x 61 x 3cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Sonia Martin Sonia Martin’s paintings are of haunting elongated figures in sparse interiors. They mix a sense of unease with beauty by working in a dark palette of blues, purples and mauve. Her canvases present interior worlds of emotions, in which thoughts and feelings combine with an exterior reality. Objects and symbols from childhood are incorporated in a gesture towards a collective and universal memory, but they seem to have a disturbing resonance within Martin’s obscure, quiet settings. It is difficult to comprehend whether we are being offered a glimpse of the artist’s personal psychosis or being shown a snapshot of our own. Sonia Martin’s practice is concerned with ideas of journeys, identity and the search for individual freedom. The images are developed from drawings and their meanings are consistently open to interpretation without relying upon any fixed meaning or narrative. These paintings blur the boundaries between inner and outer experience so that the viewer is no longer able to identify whether they are witnessing visions from a dream, or scenes from an existing past reality.

Death of Ambition II, 2012

Sand cast lead, dimensions variable

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Rob Miller “Homo sapiens are mostly about pattern recognition, both a gift and a trap” (William Gibson) In the work of Rob Miller the grey-everyday seduces through conformity and standardization. The human malleability through habit, ritual and tradition confirms that we are simply pattern processing machines, born out of a ritualised pattern and destined to live out our lives as pattern. Familiarity and regularity give meaning to life, cushioning our inherent timedependency and allowing us to deal with the “urgency of life”. Pattern gives continuity without consideration – it simply is. Miller’s work originates in an interest in repetition and its relationship to our temporality. When repetition is played out over a long period it becomes a narrative within itself, operating somewhere between boredom and engagement. It is this antithesis which forms the central concern in Miller’s work. The process of sand casting which dates back at least 3000 years BC, and the use of lead with its base metal alchemical associations, have all become a primary material concern in Miller’s practice. Lead’s weight and neurological toxicity; its supreme malleability and softness as set against its stoic resistance to environmental conditions all seem so beautifully antithetical to Miller, he uses the material as though it were created to suit the human condition. The frustrations of using an iterative process that fails more often than it succeeds; the speed at which new lead tarnishes to a dull, ubiquitous and light-consuming grey: become a suitable metaphor for the [ultimate] fallacy of our endeavours.

Contemporary Archetypes I; Fat Cat, 2011

Suiting, wood, papier mache and gold leaf, 140 x 60 x 50 cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Wendy Nelson Wendy Nelson works in short series which include two or three pieces all evolving from the first. The practical process and technicalities of realising her ideas are fundamental to her continual growth as an artist. Even if a work calls for the development of new skills, Nelson commits to the technical processes required. Nelson is attracted to sewing because it is such a female skill and still underrated as a consequence. It isn’t a quick process, and the creation of the forms underneath the fabric is also labour-intensive; as a result time gets built into her work to become a visible and valuable element. However, Nelson is not unremittingly tied to any particular working method, continuing to experiment in her practice in the pursuit of new ideas. The content of Nelson’s work stems from her personal life and experiences: a daughter’s enduring IVF treatment, the rapacious individual and institutional greed that affects us all, a sudden glimpse of a stranger’s alternative world, an unexpected or unresolved memory, and even a surreptitious flick through Heat magazine in Tesco, are all valuable sources of inspiration. At the same time Nelson’s influences also tend to be rooted in the art of the past. From Japanese dogu, to Crivelli’s Annunciation with St Emidius and medieval reliquaries, Nelson’s sources range across a broad historical context. Fat Cat owes as much to ancient Egyptian sculpture as it does to Alfred Hitchcock, who she was frightened of as a child.

Icon (Moscow), 2012

Hand-cut paper map, 119 x 91 cm.

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Margaret Proudfoot Margaret Proudfoot is a sculptor strongly drawn to fragile materials and meticulous processes. Proudfoot’s recent work focuses on maps as both material and subject matter. Her practice explores the boundaries between 2 and 3 dimensions, and between the physical and the representational. The delicate hand cut objects Proudfoot makes have additional associations with print, drawing and textiles. With Icon (Moscow) the labour of process and the delicate nature of the results are all strikingly evident; leading us to look beyond the obvious beauty and aesthetic qualities of the object. By turning the marked surface of her map towards the wall and leaving only the semi-transparent white, Proudfoot creates an inverted sense of geography and identity. Can we identify the city the map belongs to if we have only the unmarked outlines for reference? This becomes less important than the fragile beauty of the form itself and the shadows it projects; this ‘icon’ is intensely absorbing and has become a contemplative object. A sculpture has emerged from a 2D sheet of paper, challenging our conceptual definitions.

Some People in the Encyclopedia of Architecture Silkscreen print, 23 x 13cm, ed. 35 of 50

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Julie Rafalski Julie Rafalski’s work examines how this modern era represents its utopias. She seeks to foreground the seemingly apparent, but not always visible, by creating new contexts and meanings in images dating from the 20th century. Her approach concentrates on the fragmentary, the marginal and the obsolete. Rafalski often reuses printed ephemera that document modernist projects. She sources her images from books and encyclopaedias, which often show signs of wear, highlighting the history of the printed materials themselves. In Rip, Rafalski made a cyanotype from a photograph of a torn book cover. The depicted Alvorada Palace, designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1958, was named the “Palace of the Dawn”, to herald the dawning of a new modern era in Brazil. Green Area Around the Palace of Culture and Science in the Green Area Around the Palace of Culture and Science depicts a faded image from a 1970s book about communist-era Warsaw, photographed in the exact location it depicts. Rafalski subverts images by re-framing them and drawing attention to more marginal details that point to other, not always apparent elements. In Some People in the Encyclopaedia of Modern Architecture images from a 1963 edition of this encyclopedia were cropped, cutting out most of the architecture and highlighting figures merely intended for scale. Asterisk re-frames a book page that portrays Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, cropping the painting out and focusing on a green asterisk that has been drawn by a previous owner of the book. These bits of marginalia, and their symbolism, are central to the final collages.

Chin Up, 2012

Pencil (HB) on Paper, 30 x 21cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Scott Robertson Scott Robertson’s practice centres around attempts to represent failure and the inherent difficulties associated with this. How can Robertson convince an audience that failure was indeed his intention? And what problems might viewing failure as success present? Robertson was recently asked to rework a statement submitted for an exhibition because of its negative perspective, and yet negativity is at the heart of failure. For Robertson this was a moment of success. This paradox is at work in many of Robertson’s pieces. Working in a wide variety of media Robertson’s practice continues to adapt with new ideas. Chin Up’s seemingly optimistic message is destabilised by its rendering and presentation. What looks like a perfectly computer generated type face has in fact been painstakingly rendered with a HB pencil. Does the piece therefore become a pointless endeavour? Is it made more of a failure because of the skilful rendering of the type? The crumpled sheet of A4 paper negates the written message. The ironies of the work could be mistaken for being unintentional, the paper message could be a found object, but Robertson has very intentionally set out to undermine from the very beginning.

Witch Man Tree Daemon (a dark match forest wrestler) (performance still), 2012 Performance, mixed media and found objects, dimensions variable

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Mark Scott-Wood Mark Scott-Wood collects discarded debris, objects and images. This can include anything from empty cigarette packets and plastic containers to furniture or cars. These kinds of objects are particularly intriguing for Scott-Wood and his practice acknowledges the simple and hidden potential that they possess. The process of playing with and changing these objects into a work of art by the application of texture and concept is an ongoing experiment with appearance and material. The results are guided by many external factors, varying from the lyrics of a song, a joke he has recently heard or even, on occasion, objects from a dream or a nightmare. There is an overt humour in Scott Wood’s work. This humour functions as innuendo, slapstick, and can be dark, but whatever form it takes, this thin thread of absurdity is always present. The work can be deceptively immediate as a result of this, but it often requires further attention. All of these elements are brought together with a certain childlike curiosity but reflect a world in which innocence has been lost and exists only as a memory. Ultimately Scott-Wood is striving to create work which cannot easily be classified, lurking in the grey area between extremes of definition and the conventions of categorisation. For Witch Man Tree Daemon Scott-Wood continues to experiment with live art and performance, making an indirect reference to the Olympics with elements of Greco-Roman wrestling harking back to the mythology and origins of the games. The Witch Man Tree Daemons have been an important part of his practice ever since he cast a spell for luck in his career in October 2010. Scott Wood believes that certain aspects of his art came to life, including the forest guardians. With this development a legend and mythology is beginning to form within Scott Wood’s art work.

Colour of Shadow III, 2011 Oil on MDF

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Yukako Shibata Yukako Shibata’s work is painting which takes a sculptural form. While it shares a common aesthetic with minimalism in its austere and geometric forms, it makes a departure from this with its tactility and the labour intensive process which lies behind it, moving towards feminist ideologies instead. Shibata’s work is also influenced by the philosophical Light and Space movement, with a particular focus on James Turrell and Robert Irwin. The forms often derive from a geometry found both in nature and the man-made, and range from completely mundane objects to sacred architecture. Shibata is interested in observing how things are made and she translates this observation into an objective form. Shibata takes her inspiration from an attempt to find the inner light in all things mundane, and it is these moments of reverie which are embodied in her pieces. Colour is integral to Shibata’s work. She explores the fugitive colours of the natural world and questions the complex interplay of light, atmosphere and human perception. Many of her painted surfaces are deliberately hidden so that what remains visible is a reflection of colour. Intrigued by the power of latency; in Shibata’s work the viewer witnesses the slow revelation of hidden colours, and yet these reflections of colour have great presence. They replace the normal shadows cast by objects to make Shibata’s work virtually shadowless. Shibata’s works also have a site-specific nature; their placement and the view point offered, are all an important consideration even in the initial stages of an idea. Her intention is to offer a contemplative atmosphere to the work’s surrounding, and a moment of calm for the spectator.

Parasite, 2010

Silicone, fabric, polyester fibre, wood, 130 x 70cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Elly Thomas Through sculpture and drawing Elly Thomas explores childhood play as a continuous and evolving presence. Driven by a desire to create objects that appear to live independently, Thomas works with open-ended processes and emergent structures to release an image of the unpredictable into the living world. The playful results seem to invite touch, interaction and fun, bringing an element of the unexpected into the gallery space. The forms appear to have their own active personalities whilst being open to transformation through the individual perspective of each new viewer. In practice, Thomas’ sculptures or drawings often begin as ‘kits’ for forms without a predetermined configuration. The forms are activated using such processes as piling, propping, repetition or rupture. Free from finality a ‘kit’ can continue to shift and change in response to its spatial environment, the site-responsiveness of the work being absolutely essential. Performance and animation allow the audience to experience processes and structures unfolding in real time (as opposed to only encountering a resting point). This enables Thomas to communicate the extent to which the works operate as active objects. In a sense what Thomas wants to uncover is what happens if we see sculptures or drawings as ‘toys’ whilst we continue to view them, or label them ‘art’.

Hypoderm, 2012

Magazine page & table lamp; a double-sided page lit from behind, 50 x 21 x 155cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Kazuya Tsuji Through his practice Kazuya Tsuji tries to reclaim an attraction to the disposable imagery which surrounds us, whether this is found in fashion magazines, secondhand books or old photographs. Even when we are bombarded with such visuals on a daily basis, we hardly pay any attention to them for their repetitive, mundane and anonymous character. This negligence is the niche interest of Tsuji’s practice. He believes that true beauty breathes through the gaps in mundane knowledge to reveal the miraculous, the hilarious, the grotesque and the wonderful. The disposability of reproducible images gives Tsuji the chance to fantasize and to fabricate a narrative. In many cases Tsuji’s works arises from a coincidence or mistake in the prescribed routine; when a page of a magazine is lit from behind it forms a juxtaposition that catches the eye, and when an image is shattered by a prism it multiplies into a new form. Familiar materials can be employed to create a fresh metaphor for our lives. Tsuji brings the extras which orbit us in our daily lives into focus, manipulating our perception to make us look anew.

In a glass cage, 2012 Oil on linen, 71 x 71cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Ben Walker The central theme which currently informs Ben Walker’s work is historical atrocities, specifically the Holocaust and Nazism. Imagery from the Holocaust and military youth movements are deployed as signifiers of evil, dread and symptoms of a dead-end future, in order to display and expose the emptiness of the subject. Walker works on coarse grained linen which is sized rather than primed, and uses a fairly narrow range of colours – mainly browns, greys and greens. There is an emphasis upon the actual process and evolution of making the work evident in his paintings. Value is placed on the application of paint, the variation of the brush marks, and the surface textures. Walker doesn’t strive to make literal descriptive paintings but tries instead to use figurative elements and subdued tonal ranges to depict people who have been viewed as anonymous or objectified in order to reflect a sense of vulnerability and create an impression of remoteness. The figures in the compositions are often vague or simplified; reduced to silhouettes, with all unnecessary detail eliminated. The backgrounds of the paintings are spare but incorporate suggestive elements which seem to evoke some kind of specific space or setting.

Northwesterly Breeze (video still), 2012

MP4 video file, HTC desire mobile phone, 9 seconds

WW SOLO Awardâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; |â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Group 2012

Dominic Watson Dominic Watson is interested in the dichotomy between refined thought and genuine expression, that which is considered rational as opposed to sentimental. He likes to use materials and objects which exist outside the realm of art; their lack of pretence means that they inherently carry a collective meaning. They are both economically and visually accountable due to their recognition in the context of the everyday. The objects Watson chooses are all ready-to-hand and place value on the arbitrary function of objects and their basic aesthetic. The level of physical intimacy they possess does not resonate on a cathartic level. The transformation of these materials into art objects gives them a value far beyond their own zenith. This absurd renegotiation of presupposed value aims to undermine the aura and hierarchical power of the art object and seeks to revel in the inglorious and unappreciated. These works act as a promiscuous advance, a drunken groping away from their historical lineage. Acting as a counterpoint to objects adopting the status of art works, the videos brazenly reject the idea of hiding behind a pre-existing language, they are bullish and direct acts, employed to evoke a basic sense of pleasure and enjoyment.

Antares and Love I, 2012

Giclee/Screen Print with Silver Leaf, 67 x 91 cm, ed. of 50

WW SOLO Awardâ&#x20AC;&#x201A; |â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Group 2012

Joe Webb Joe Webbâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s collages work upon a basic rule which involves sourcing just two or three images which are then presented as a single reinvented image. The objective of this practice is to communicate a new message or idea. Webb began making these simple hand-made collages as a kind of luddite reaction to having worked on computers for years. He likes the limitations of collage. Using found imagery and a pair of scissors, there are no Photoshop options to resize, adjust colours or undo. His works have a strong antitechnological feel which is evident in both the hand-made feel and the nostalgic, dreamy quality of the materials employed. There is a romance at work in these newly created narratives, sometimes light and humorous at other moments surreal, which does not belong to the current age but to the on-screen world of the 40s, 50s and 60s. By cutting out the identity of some of his figures and creating faceless portraits, Webb places his collages firmly in the realm of daydream and fantasy, suggesting a longing for a world which has slipped beyond physical reach.

Warpaint, 2011

Oil paint and spray paint on pigmented gesso, panel, installed on perspex, foam block and metal bracket shelf,42 x 42 cm

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Sarah West Sarah West systematically scavenges through the vast array of imagery in magazines and newspapers; consuming, analysing and reacting to chance shots of unpredictable subjects and odd compositions. She selects these pictographic images and then depicts them, culminating in work which conveys ruinous contemporary anxieties and vanities and draws upon references from art history. Figures, which are always directly lifted from source, structure the compositions. They are objectified and further reduced or manipulated in West’s continual play with presence through absence. Specific images are chosen to become symbols. Consumable and perishable goods suggest contemporary ‘memento mori’, and encapsulate the brevity of life and its permanent fluctuations, echoing the fleeting nature of the original source. Universally recognised artifacts, such as carrier bags or flooring, are appropriated and re-objectified. Alongside these are images of luxurious items, such as lobsters or accessories associated with excess and the potential superficiality of materialism. Ideas of ‘masking’ – the veiling of visual or social ugliness – are questioned within the work, both through the choice of adorning imagery and in the way paint is applied. West makes a traditional recipe of handmade gesso, choosing, when appropriate, to add pigmented colours. Whilst the gesso surface is prepared on board, West fanatically sands for a smooth yet inevitably flawed surface which, when inspected close up, reveal the intricacies and incidental qualities of the material. A combination of materials and painting techniques are exploited, mixing tightly worked areas with violent marks to enhance and heighten the image’s qualities. The process and aesthetics of collage form the basis of the work. The direct lifting and playful juxtaposition of familiar, yet seemingly disparate imagery, produces a heightened sense of peculiarity.

Dukes, 2011

Plastic bunting, push pins, acrylic on canvas, domestic fan, dimensions variable

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

Sarah Kate Wilson “Painting is a philosophical enterprise that doesn’t always involve paint”1 In the studio Sarah Kate Wilson questions at what point works become paintings and when materials become paint. Wilson’s paintings without paint are made using a plethora of surprising materials. She employs paint-replacements which within Wilson’s artistic lexicon are claimed as paint; ribbons, balloons, fishing nets, birthday candles and plastic objects, all continue to metamorphose once they exit the studio. The surface of her works might recall painted canvases but they are a deliberate subversion of conventional rules and expectations. Wilson believes her works must continue to reformulate in the hands of others, as they are ‘Living Paintings’. As creator, she can play with the control she exercises over her objects by attaching rules to the works designed for the owner, gallery and curator. The same applies to the spaces these works reside in; the outside world should also have the power to consciously transfigure her objects. People, wind machines, weather, fire and time are all utilized to activate these works. Howard Halle, “Photo-unrealism,” in Terry R. Myers (ed.) Painting: Documents of contemporary Art (London and Cambridge, MA: Whitechapel and the MIT Press, 2011, p.132 1

WW SOLO Award | GROUP 2012 Published by WW Gallery on the occasion of GROUP 2012, an exhibition of 37 artists long-listed for the WW SOLO Award. 1 – 25 August 2012, WW Gallery, 34/35 Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8DX. www.wilsonwilliamsgallery.com © 2012 WW Gallery. All rights reserved. Designed by Anne Lander Edited by Francesca Brooks All images © the artists.

WW SOLO Award | Group 2012

The WW SOLO Award 2012 is funded by WW Projects Ltd. and supported by: RHA Design, State Magazine and Jackson’s Framing Ltd.