Exhibition: Corporeality, Objects and Other Stuff

A group show consisting of painting and sculpture. Each artist in this show approaches the material and physical matter of their work using a combination of sophisticated visual playfulness, and a range of carefully considered responses to modernism and abstraction.

The corporeal referred to here is not so much about the idea that we can only understand objects if they somehow reflect the body, nor that when viewing objects we are constantly looking for the body within the work – that the only way we can understand abstract art is by placing it within the context of bodily form. More prevalent in this instance is how the materiality of the work invites us to focus on the body of the artist during the creative process and how the physical space the work occupies affects the viewer.

Elements of performance are utilised to construct some works; continuous painted lines, applied in one stroke, construct others. Paintings are stitched and unstitched – pulled apart. Objects are forged, melted, sheered and moulded. These physical actions and processes are apparent in the effect they have on the viewer.

Encouraged to move physically to interact with what is presented to them, the audience at once becomes aware of the material nature of the object, how it was made and also the space it inhabits. In this sense the artists in this show are presenting corporeal meanings that relate to other, more visceral aspects of the body and the visual language of abstraction.