Current
Clare Gasson, ACT, Matt’s Gallery, London, Private View Friday 6 December 6-9pm, exhibition open daily 7 – 15 December 2019
Matt’s Gallery presents ACT, an exhibition by Clare Gasson.
The exhibition centres around a collection of abstract drawings produced by the artist in a series started in 1999. The pieces are drawn on one side of a single sheet of A4 photocopy paper using a wooden pencil similar to one you might find in a hardware supply company.
These A4 drawings are the results of private daily practice performances to find a thought space to begin work in the studio. Each embodies an index of time and repetition. They act to chart the rhythm of the artist’s day and are worked on little by little each visit. The drawings at Matt’s Gallery have been selected from this on-going series.
Upcoming
Patrick Goddard, Trip To Eclipse, Matt’s Gallery, London, Private View Friday 31 January, 6-9pm, exhibition open Weds – Sun 1 – 23 February 2020
Matt’s Gallery presents Trip To Eclipse, a new installation by Patrick Goddard.
The work centres around an audio piece which sees the artist narrating a tale of a man and his talking dog, Whoopsie, as they take a walk in a newly built imitation abandoned warehouse. As they walk and talk they encounter broken glass curated across the floor, an Arts Council funded climbing frame and a rave organised by the local MP.
Matt’s Gallery thanks the Arts Council England and Ron Henocq Fine Art for their generous support.
Artists’ News
Anne Bean & Richard Wilson, Bow Gamelan Ensemble perform at DRAF x Goldsmiths: Resonant Frequencies Summit, George Wood Theatre, Goldsmiths University, Saturday 7 Dec 2019, 2 – 9pm
DRAF is delighted to present in partnership with Goldsmiths University’s Unit for Sound Practice Research a one-day summit of talks, presentations and performances around sound on Saturday 7 December 2019.
This event is free of charge and open to all and will present a range of artists, philosophers and sound researchers, including Jess Aslan, Bow Gamelan Ensemble, John Drever, Dmitri Galitzine and Laura Dee Milnes, Iris Garrelfs, Harold Offeh, Maria Papadomanolaki and Aura Satz.
This summit is part of DRAF’s 2019 Resonant Frequencies programme, a multi-faceted project concerning sound, noise and hearing. The project began with a series of closed, non-public workshops that offered artists working with sound the opportunity to develop, collaborate and experiment free from the pressure of producing specific outcomes.
Nicola Bealing, Jo Bruton, Oona Grimes, Lucy Gunning, Hayley Newman, Marianna Simnett & Alison Turnbull, The Bower – Box of Delights, The Bower, London, Private View Sunday 8 December, 2-4pm, 5 – 22 December 2019
We are pleased to be collaborating with The Bower to show editions and publications in The Bower – Box of Delights by represented artists, plus artists who have exhibited at Matt’s Gallery. Including Nicola Bealing, Jo Bruton, Oona Grimes, Lucy Gunning, Hayley Newman, Marianna Simnett & Alison Turnbull. The Bower will also be launching their portfolio of artists’ editions: a series of risographs produced with artists who have worked with The Bower, printed locally by Roko Press.
All proceeds from The Bower – Box of Delights will support fundraising for The Bower’s programme and the work of the respective non-profits who have contributed to the exhibition.
Alison Turnbull, More Gravy!, Tintype Gallery, London, Private View Tuesday 10 December, 6 – 8pm, 11 December 2019 – 4 January 2020
Alison Turnbull will be showing five drawings made between 2015-2019 in More Gravy! at Tintype, an exhibition of works on paper, editions, paintings and ceramics. Other exhibiting artists include Jo Addison, Edwina Ashton, Alice Browne, An Gee Chan, Suki Chan, David Cheeseman, David Micheaud, George Eksts, Adam Gillam, Grant Foster, Oona Grimes, Vanessa Jackson, Jost Münster, Kit Poulson, Neal Rock, Neal Tait, Alison Turnbull, Alice Walton, Laura White, Joby Williamson, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Madalina Zaharia.
Hayley Newman, Freeze-frame, Fast-forward, The Koppel Project Central, London, Until 14 December 2019
Freeze-frame, Fast-forward is an exhibition of works that ‘stop the clock’ at various points in the constant stream of moments which become memories and experiences, which in turn form the substance of our lives. ‘Freezing the frame’ allows us some breathing room for reflection, analysis, and meditation. The show contrasts the fast-moving stream of our present-centred lives with the singular moments which give substance to the transitory. Reimagining history; catching the ephemeral; and weaving in political stories, social experiences and personal archives, the artists examine and respond to a variety of moments through highly individual approaches to a wide range of media.
Hayley Newman is showing archival video works from the 1990s, including 1996’s Shot in the Dark, alongside objects that feature in or were used in the creation of the exhibited works.
Hannah Skinner, The David Troostwyk / Matt’s Gallery Studio Award 2018/19, Camberwell Space, London, Until 14 December 2019
Hannah Skinner is the recipient of The David Troostwyk / Matt’s Gallery Studio Award, 2018-19. The award, given each year, provides a student graduating in Sculpture at Camberwell UAL with a rent-free studio for one year at Martello Street, E8 — the SPACE studio where Robin Klassnik first opened Matt’s Gallery in 1979.
Skinner’s work explores themes of queerness, mimicry and humour translated into soft sculpture, detailed metals and embroidery. She uses materials to create a sense of opulence — though inexpensive, their luxurious qualities portray wealth, creating an ambivalence between the perceived and actual value. For this exhibition, the artist presents a kinetic sculpture, referencing high fashion, while abstracting conventional form through weight, tension and balance. Created from soft fabrics with intricately designed skeletons, as in previous works, Skinner uses air to propel the sculptures to animate the space.
Leah Capaldi, Ridiculous!, Elephant West, London, 9 January – 2 February 2020, performance Wednesday 22 January, 6.30-8.30pm
For Ridiculous!, writer and curator Paul Carey-Kent presents an exhibition and performance programme of some twenty artists who are not afraid to look stupid. ‘The True Artist’, runs the statement famously caught in neon by Bruce Nauman in 1967, ‘Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths’. In the same spirit, the true artist is prepared to present the ridiculous, to work in an apparently ridiculous way, or to appear ridiculous themselves. They will run the risk that we’ll be laughing at them as much as with them, in order to get at surprising perspectives.
Leah Capaldi will be showing new work that straddles the disciplines of performance and sculpture and will be performing at Elephant West on Wednesday 22 January 2020, 6.30-8.30pm.
Benedict Drew, EXAGGERATE EVERYTHING, BACKLIT, Nottingham, Until 15 February 2020
EXAGGERATE EVERYTHING is a collaboration between BACKLIT Gallery and Manchester-based artist initiative Broken Grey Wires, led by Lizz Brady. The exhibition presents works by artists sharing their different personal experiences of mental health and wellbeing, with the aim of opening up difficult conversations around these subjects.
Featured in the exhibition is Benedict Drew’s work THE ANTI ECSTATIC MACHINES, first shown at Matt’s Gallery in 2018. THE ANTI ECSTATIC MACHINES acts as a prologue to a body of work around ecstatic states. For Drew ecstatic states appear as a cultural imperative engendering positive forms of resistance. A song in digital video, painting and sound, Drew’s source material is a body of film he has shot in 16mm at sites around the south of England. Locations such as the port at Dover, the industrial greenhouses of Thanet Earth and new-build residential housing developments become material for a body of work whose backdrop is the social and political fall out of Tory austerity and the EU referendum.
Hayley Newman, Bastards, 2019
Bastards is an artists’ book, designed by Hayley Newman and Fraser Muggeridge, and published by Matt’s Gallery on the occasion of Newman’s exhibition Tongue-tied, 2019. The book, initially written in one session as an act of personal catharsis, asks the reader not to look away but instead to linger within its pages, inhabit the book and be a witness to its words.
Newman’s deeply honest and vulnerable text is published in solidarity with all survivors of the abuse of power. It is part of an incidental archive of over 500 drawings, watercolours, texts and knitted textiles made by Hayley Newman since June 2018, all of which trace personal responses to a time of uncertainty and turbulence.
Bastards is available to purchase from the gallery or through our website.
Nicola Bealing, Three Acts and Seven Scenes, Salisbury Arts Centre, Salisbury, 27 January – 28 March 2020
Nicola Bealing’s solo exhibition, Three Acts and Seven Scenes, responds to the retelling of Lorca’s Blood Wedding, a new production of which will be shown between 6 – 22 February 2020 at Salisbury Playhouse. Themes of dark and light, blood and contortion, wind, sky and water, eyes and teeth, long roads, high mountains, birds in forests together with powerful representations of flora recur in Bealing’s work.
Alison Turnbull, Out of Line, Saicoro, Tokyo, 24 January – 29 March 2020
Out of Line is a solo exhibition of new works on paper by Alison Turnbull at Saicoro, Tokyo. For this exhibition, Turnbull continues her practice of using stationery as grounds for her drawings, using pages of exercise books and myriad kinds of printed papers.
Mike Nelson, MASK, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Until 5 January 2020
Mike Nelson is showing his 2009 mixed media work Untitled in international group exhibition MASK. Masks make us think of Carnival, of the rituals of African tribes, of death masks, theatre, film and fashion, as well as of role play, disguise and protection. Masks are an ancient, often controversial object of human cultural history. And masks also have a long tradition in the visual arts. But how is the subject being addressed in contemporary art?
Interest in masks among contemporary artists focuses not just on the mask as an object but also, and in particular, on its social, cultural and political implications. Between the opposite poles of showing and hiding and in a society in which skilful self-presentation is regarded as an indicator of personal success, the mask is highly topical. This motivates many artists to take up the subject and diagnose and reassess both the concept and the object from a contemporary point of view.
Willie Doherty, Walking Through Walls, Gropius Bau, Berlin, Until 19 January 2020
Walking Through Walls marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the most symbolic events of the 20th century, interrogating the experience of vulnerability and anxiety caused by power structures that thrive on confinement and segregation.
The exhibition brings together 28 international artists and covers a wide variety of media including painting, sculpture, photography, film, sound installation, site-specific interventions and performance. It is conceived as one comprehensive, non-linear experience, constructed around three interwoven lines of inquiry. The first brings together works that explore the physical presence of walls and how they function as sites of separation. The second reflects on the impact that physical and metaphorical walls have on those who live with them. The third portrays the struggles to overcome existing divisions. In addition, the exhibition directly references the historically charged location of the Gropius Bau. Many symbolic sites are in its direct vicinity, or even visible from the exhibition galleries themselves, including a fragment of the Berlin Wall.
Willie Doherty will be showing an early photographic work, Fractured/Encased (1990), alongside works by Marina Abramović and Ulay, José Bechara, Sibylle Bergemann, Tagreed Darghouth, Jose Dávila, Willie Doherty, Smadar Dreyfus, Melvin Edwards, Dara Friedman, Dora García, Zahrah Al Ghamdi, Mona Hatoum, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Michael Kvium, Gustav Metzger, Reem Al Nasser, Christian Odzuck, Emeka Ogboh, Anri Sala, Fred Sandback, Aki Sasamoto, Regina Silveira, Siska, Javier Téllez, Samson Young, Yuan Yuan, Héctor Zamora.
Willie Doherty, Crossing Lines, Constructing Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, Until 5 January 2020
Crossing Lines, Constructing Home investigates two parallel ideas: national, political, and cultural conceptions of boundaries and borders; and the evolving hybrid spaces, identities, languages, and beliefs created by the movement of peoples. While offering historical context and a consideration of the forces that commonly drive migration, such as political instability, natural disasters, and oppression linked to race, religion, culture, and class, the exhibition presents a complicated narrative about immigration and displacement. Willie Doherty is among a roster of international artists exhibiting in Crossing Lines and will be showing his powerful video installation Remains (2013).
Willie Doherty, how the light gets in, Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, USA, Until 8 December 2019
how the light gets in is an exhibition about the movement of people across the globe and the welcome cracks that develop in our notions of borders and nation states—“that’s how the light gets in,” Leonard Cohen sang in his 1992 song “Anthem”:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
This exhibition and its accompanying programme are about hope at a time in which migration has become one of the most pressing issues for humanity. Artists can make the heavily mediated mass-migration crisis more tangible, representing often difficult and controversial ideas, and playing a critical role in helping people understand the complicated politics and emotions of the im/migrant experience.
how the light gets in brings together an international group of 58 artists and artist teams and collectives, ranging in age from their twenties to their nineties and representing 29 countries of birth and residence. Their work engages with themes of migration, immigration, displacement, and exile. Doherty will be showing photographic works made between 2016-17.
Jordan Baseman, The Twin, Leamington Spa Art Gallery, Leamington Spa, Until 2 February 2020
Jordan Baseman’s film 1 + 1 = 1 will be shown in The Twin at Leamington Spa Art Gallery, as part of the Coventry Biennial. The exhibition provides opportunities for exchange and dialogue, ideas which are addressed in this exhibition through media including photography, video, paper-based collage and sculptural installation. 1 + 1 = 1 features Patrick Wilkins, a heart and lung transplant recipient who relates his dreams and experiences. We listen to Pat, accompanied by his wife Christine, as we watch an unidentifiable, semi-organic form rotate, move, grow and recede. The black and white moving image appears to be old, yet it is digitally manipulated. The white light that emanates from the form is combined with Pat’s moving and often frightening account of his procedure. 1 + 1 = 1 was commissioned by Wysing Arts and Leamington Spa Art Gallery, as part of Arts Council England’s National Touring Programme, through a residency at Papworth Hospital Heart and Lung Transplant Unit.
Alison Turnbull, From narrow provinces, CAMPLE LINE, Cample, Scotland, Until 14 December 2019
From narrow provinces brings together work by artists whose respective bodies of work take distinct approaches to materials, colour, shapes and structure, and operate in compelling junctures between painting and textiles, sculpture and architecture. Alison Turnbull is among the roster of international artists who will be showing works that investigate the inherent behaviours of the materials and processes they use.
Benedict Drew, ON EDGE: Living in an Age of Anxiety, Science Gallery, London, Until 19 January 2020
Drawing on cutting-edge mental health research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London, ON EDGE: Living in an Age of Anxiety reflects the perspectives of artists, scientists, young people and patients. The exhibition will feature work by Benedict Drew amongst others and considers different personal experiences of anxiety, how the world around us can cause worry or stress, and our evolutionary impulse to be on edge.
Nathaniel Mellors, Bad Copy (2012) featured in Endless Life, Buitenplaats Doornburgh, The Netherlands, Until 29 March 2020
Will it soon be possible to extend our lives endlessly?
From 12 September 2019 to 29 March 2020, contemporary artists and scientists will reflect on the extension of life in Endless Life at Buitenplaats Doornburgh. The exhibition will include the animatronic sculpture Bad Copy (2012) by Nathaniel Mellors alongside work by Isabelle Andriessen, Sander Breure & Witte Van Hulzen, Robert Glas, Katja Novitskova, Temra Pavlovic and Hannes Wiedemann and will ask what our world will look like when death is no longer an established fact for everyone.
New Symphony of Time expands the boundaries of Mississippi’s identity, casting light on a shared past to help reflect an expansive, more inclusive future. This ongoing exhibition features a single screen version of Graham Fagen’s, Slave’s Lament amongst other contemporary pieces such as Benny Andrews’ Mississippi River Bank and Jeffrey Gibson’s Sharecropper, pieced quilts, historical paintings, and self-taught artwork, which provide an alternate lens from which to consider the significant creative contributions of the state of Mississippi and its place as part of a broader, American narrative.
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