March 2021

Gerard Hemsworth (1945-2021)

Gerard Hemsworth, Sue Ormerod and Robin Klassnik (l-r). Image courtesy of Kathryn Klassnik.

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Gerard Hemsworth (1945-2021).

He was, in the 1970s, part of a generation of British conceptual artists that included Tim Head and Richard Long; artists who used text and language and created books. I was introduced to him by John Hilliard.

This is what I thought he was going to bring to Matt’s Gallery when we did our first show together in 1983 – I had come to know his work through his austere and pared down couplings of objects and text.

I was quite surprised when he arrived with three paintings combining nudes, figures and mythological themes. These works were the forerunners of a turn towards more painterly concerns that he continued to develop throughout his life. The works he went on to create were highly coded and yet also retained a playful, simple and whimsical quality that made them engaging and endearing.

This was the first of three shows we would make together, including Means to an End, 1983, and Self Portraits in 1988. Our last show with him was 2015’s Nothing To Declare – an exhibition of a body of work depicting highly stylised cacti in minimal, almost non-existent landscapes. He was a dapper, handsome man with impeccable taste and a beautifully designed and decorated home. In many ways he looked like his art: pared-down, smart and clean. He had recently moved to Hastings and built a beautiful house with a lake and a fantastic studio with his wife Sue.

I had a phone call with Gerard a few days before he died and we enthusiastically discussed some prints that had recently been found in Holland. He wanted to donate some to the gallery to support our fundraising endeavours and for me to donate one to the Government Art Collection.

Gerard was a great speaker and storyteller and an exceptional artist and teacher. He was Professor of Fine Art and Director of the MFA Fine Art Programme at Goldsmiths College, University of London until 2011. Artists we worked with who were taught by him include Jordan Baseman, Lucy Gunning, Jaki Irvine, Avis Newman, Lindsay Seers, Kate Smith, Roy Voss and Annie Whiles. In tutorials he had a talent for cutting through the bullshit and pointing students in the right direction. Many who studied under him had great success in their lives as artists, and he had the ability to stay in touch with them and support them beyond their time as his students.

Gerard will be remembered fondly and missed by many.

He is survived by his wife Sue Ormerod and their three children, Ruby, Jack and Frankie, and two children from his first marriage to May Davidson, Matthew and Jane.

Robin Klassnik

Click here to read Gerard Hemsworth’s obituary in The Guardian

A selection of books and printed material on Gerard Hemsworth. Image courtesy of Robin Klassnik.

MattFlix

Suzanne Treister, TECHNOSHAMANIC SYSTEMS New Cosmological Models for Survival, until 5.59pm 19 March 2021

Courtesy the artist, Annely Juda Fine Art, London and P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York.

MattFlix presents Suzanne Treister’s TECHNOSHAMANIC SYSTEMS: New Cosmological Models for Survival (2020-2021), available to explore until 19 March.

Take a trip through Suzanne Treister’s online presentation of TECHNOSHAMANIC SYSTEMS: New Cosmological Models for Survival, a digital platform hosted by MattFlix for one month only. From crystalline architectures to prismatic apparel, TECHNOSHAMANIC SYSTEMS gathers film, audio, diagrams and works on paper to build a speculative atlas of alternative existence.

TECHNOSHAMANIC SYSTEMS presents microcosmic non-colonialist plans towards a techno-spiritual imaginary of alternative visions of survival on earth and inhabitation of the cosmos.

TECHNOSHAMANIC SYSTEMS encourages the unification of art, spirituality, science and technology through hypnotic visions of our potential communal futures alongside those of possible extraterrestrial entities or civilisations.

Countering invasive agendas of governments and the private space industry, TECHNOSHAMANIC SYSTEMS proposes a political metamorphosis and transmutation of human consciousness towards a new Earthly and interplanetary paradigm.

TECHNOSHAMANIC SYSTEMS consists of multiple components under the categories, Project Diagrams, Earth Eco Systems and Architectures, Reinvented Technologies, Interplanetary Social Structures, Designs for Spacecraft, Apparel, Interplanetary Space Habitations, Interplanetary Meditation and Biospheres Islands, Crystal Architectures, Vultures, Rituals, Stars and Visions.

All works courtesy the artist, Annely Juda Fine Art, London and P.P.O.W. Gallery New York.

Artists’ News

Matt’s Gallery now represents Annie Whiles

Annie Whiles, The Listening Thing, 2020, detail. Lime wood, oil paint and glass eyes, 196 x 73 x 39 cm. Image by Jonathan Bassett. Courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.

We are thrilled to announce that Annie Whiles, whose exhibition The Listening Thing took place at our Webster Road space in 2020, is now represented by Matt’s Gallery.

Whiles lives and works in London and has taught at Goldsmiths, University of London since 2003. She makes woodcarvings, drawings and embroideries from a collection of personal icons, gathered from encounters or confusions she has experienced. The images, photographs and objects gather in her studio and may lay dormant for several years until the right time. The artist likens these icons to messages or signals, mediating between different worlds.

Annie Whiles was interviewed by Matt’s Gallery Deputy Director Tim Dixon for Q4, the fourth instalment in our ongoing series of artist interviews. Click here to read Q4.

Leah Capaldi, Lay Down, 2016. Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.

Leah Capaldi has been selected to undertake the New Contemporaries-BSR Residency in 2021. The studio residency will allow Capaldi to spend time familiarising herself with Rome and to undertake research towards developing new work.

Founded in 1901, the British School at Rome — the UK’s leading research institute abroad — is a centre of interdisciplinary research excellence in the Mediterranean, supporting the full range of arts, humanities and social sciences. Behind its Lutyens-designed façade in central Rome, a succession of resident scholars, architects and artists engage with the art, history and culture of Italy, the Mediterranean and the wider world through a rich variety of research projects conducted in its world-class Library, artist studios and event spaces.

Nicola Bealing & Matthew Krishanu, John Moores Painting Prize 2020, online

Nicola Bealing, The Horse, 2019. Oil on linen, 118x76cm. Courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.

Artist Nicola Bealing and Matt’s Gallery Trustee Matthew Krishanu are exhibiting artists in the current iteration of the John Moores Painting Prize. On show is Bealing’s painting The Horse (2019), a work commissioned for her solo exhibition Three Acts and Seven Scenes which took place at Salisbury Art Centre in 2020. Also included is Krishanu’s 2020 Riverboat, a large-scale work on canvas.

This year’s paintings were chosen by jurors Hurvin Anderson, Alison Goldfrapp, Jennifer Higgie, Gu Wenda and Michelle Williams Gamaker.

Matthew Krishanu, Riverboat, 2020. Oil on canvas, 200×270 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

David Osbaldeston, THE ARDENT, 2021

David Osbaldeston, THE ARDENT. Published by Studio O Editions, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.

Printed in 100 copies / £5 + P&P

THE ARDENT depicts progressive intensity of colour and form as unifying elements, and features 6 plates in total including Admirer, Follower, Devotee, Disciple, Obsessive, Lover.

Softcover, 20 pages
Dimensions 125 x 175 mm, 8 color images.
Typeset in Mock Modernica.

Published by Studio O Editions, 2021. Click here to purchase.

Lindsay Seers & Keith Sargent, D02.2, Plicnik Space Initiative, until 15 October 2021

Lindsay Seers & Keith Sargent, Anomaly 4, 2020. Still from video, duration 18:34. Courtesy of the artists and Matt’s Gallery.

As we transition into an online era, Plicnik Space Initiative proposes to test dissonances between physical and virtual spaces. Launched as an open call in June 2020, the project invited artists to propose works to be shown aboard the D02.2 spacecraft with the aim to test ways in which participants would interact with both illusionary spatial constraints and how they would respond to distinct spatial narratives.

For D02.2, Lindsay Seers and Keith Sargent present Anomaly 4. Anomaly 4 does not really want to be explained by an elucidating text; it wants to rest in the medium that shapes it. It does not follow a convention of story telling that governs theatre/cinema. What it does follow is a freewheeling set of associations and the vagaries of our interpretations of events. As a construct it wants to be like consciousness might really be … fragmented, discontinuous, oscillating, driven to constructing false cause and effect narratives from endless occurrences that ultimately have no clear singular causal relation.

Lindsay Seers and Keith Sargent, Recent Award Wins

Lindsay Seers/Keith Sargent, S/He is still inside you still, 2020. Digital video, Duration: 13:26. Courtesy of the artists and Matt’s Gallery, London.

We are delighted to announce that three recent works by Lindsay Seers and Keith Sargent have been selected for several film festivals, details of which can be found below:

S/He is still inside you²

Finalist, Sweden film awards, Lulea, Sweden. 2020
Official Selection, Blacksphere festival, Prague, Czech Republic. 2020
Official selection, Los Angeles Rocks Film Festival, Los Angeles, USA. 2020
Official selection, London Rocks Film Festival, London, UK. 2020

care(less)²

Award winner, L’Age d’Or International Arthouse Film Festival, Kolkata, India. 2020
Award winner, Barcelona Planet Film Festival, Barcelona, Spain. 2020
Semi-finalist, Vienna Science Film Festival, Vienna, Austria. 2020
Official selection, Aesthetica Film Festival, York, UK. 2020
Official selection, FIVARS – Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories, Toronto, Canada. 2020
Official selection, The International 3D-stereo Film Festival, Moscow, Russia. 2020
Semi-finalist, Blackbird film festival, New York, USA. 2021
Official selection, Global lift-off festival extravaganza, Pinewood, London. 2021
Official selection, Human Rights Film Network, Dox: Prague, Czech Republic. 2021
Official selection, Global lift-off festival, Berlin, Germany. 2021
Official selection, Anifilm, Liberec, Czech Republic. 2021
Official selection, Aesthetica Film Festival, 2020
Official selection, FIVARS – Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories, 2020

 
Anamoly 4
 
Award winner, L’Age d’Or International Arthouse Film Festival, Kolkata, India. 2020
Finalist, Rome independent Prisma awards, Rome, Italy. 2020
Semi-finalist, Sweden film Awards, Lulea, Sweden. 2020
Semi-finalist, Quarantini film Awards, Hollywood, USA. 2020
 

Imogen Stidworthy, Detours, e-flux Journal #115

Imogen Stidworthy, still from Balayer – A Map of Sweeping, 2014–18. Courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.

Imogen Stidworthy was co-commissioned to produce the text Detours by Katia Krupennikova and Inga Lāce as part of four special contributions to e-flux journal. This collaboration aims to expand on the themes raised in the contemporary art festival Survival Kit 11. Titled “Being Safe Is Scary,” after a piece by artist Banu Cennetoğlu for Documenta 14, Survival Kit 11 took place in Riga from September 4 to October 4, 2020. It was organized by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art and curated by Katia Krupennikova.

Exploring the mechanisms shaping the politics of safety, and taking the heavily charged title “Being Safe Is Scary,” the festival aimed to establish a continuity of urgent discourse on security and political violence. At the same time, the festival sought to explore how it might be possible to transform the suppositions that undergird this discourse—reconnecting safety to practices of love, intimacy, sharing, commonality, mutual support, attention, care for each other, and care for the environment.

Stidworthy’s video work Iris [A Fragment] (2018–19) was exhibited at Survival Kit 11 (Being Safe is Scary). Click here to read Imogen Stidworthy’s Detours.

The way we work, A conversation between Melanie Jackson and Merve Elveren for EVA

poorhousereadingrooms, with Abondance Matanda, Ezra Jackson, Joy Crookes (left to right). Image courtesy of Melanie Jackson.

Click here to read a conversation between Melanie Jackson and Merve Elveren conducted between November 10, 2020 – January 28, 2021. Jackson discusses some of her recent projects, including poorhousereadingrooms, a residency space with a focus on artists’ books and ephemera.

Graham Fagen, New Symphony of Time, Mississippi Museum of Art, Mississippi, USA, Until September 2021

Graham Fagen, The Slave’s Lament, 2015, video still. Image courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.

 

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.

David Osbaldeston, The Serving Library Collection, 019 Gallery, Ghent

David Osbaldeston, The Variable: Translator, 2018. Half-tone digital print on Somerset paper, 102 x 71 cm. Photography by Michiel de Cleene. Courtesy of the artist and Matt’s Gallery, London.

David Osbaldeston’s work can be seen in a long term exhibition of The Serving Library Collection, which is on semi-permanent display at 019 Gallery, Ghent until late 2021.

A number of works by Osbaldeston will be shown in the collection, including Another Shadow Fight, a series of woodcuts from 2008 and more recently The Variable: Translator from his 2018 exhibition at Bonington Gallery. The collection houses over 100 works and objects, and includes artists Janice Kerbel, Ryan Gander, Frances Starck, Richard Hamilton, Chris Evans, Sanya Kantarovsky and many more. Click here for more information about The Serving Library Collection.

The Serving Library Annual 20/21 is published by Roma and functions as a catalogue for the collection’s semi-permanent display. Click here to read more and buy.

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