27 January — 6 March 2010

Jess Flood-Paddock
Sacrifice

Opening reception Tuesday 26 January, 6 — 8pm

Jess Flood-Paddock’s multi-disciplined practice is rooted in dialogue surrounding that of sculpture and the studio. Whether contemplating the sculptural form of small scale objects or referencing public monuments, her approach is at once a serious investigation of form as well as a witty take on objecthood.

In this exhibition, she will present a reproduction of a life-size aztec sculpture. In order to fit in the gallery the sculpture will appear as if having been split crudely in half, suggesting the sacrifice of the essence of an artwork or artefact for the sake of practicality. Like showing a copy of a painting because the original is too valuable, roping off a sculpture or having a McDonald’s alongside the Sacré-Coeur; Flood-Paddock’s gesture is an example of a frequent compromise visual consumers are used to making, often unknowingly or unwillingly. Flood-Paddock raises questions about purity of experience and questions of display as they relate to the viewer and the tension between humour and, as titled, sacrifice.

Jess Flood-Paddock trained at the Slade (BA Fine Art 2000) and the RCA (MA Sculpture 2005). Recent exhibitions include a two-person show with Phyllida Barlow at The Russian Club, London (2009); Jess Flood-Paddock Matthew Darbyshire William Hunt, curated by Sacha Craddock, Sadler’s Wells, London (2008); and New Contemporaries, The Coach Shed, Liverpool and Club Row, London (2006).

She has a forthcoming exhibition at Malta Contemporary Art with Spartacus Chetwynd in July 2010

Installation views

Tearoom, 2009

20 November – 14 December 2009

William E Jones

In Mansfield, Ohio, 1962, in the United States of America, the police force hid a camera behind a two-way mirror in a men’s public toilet. The primary objective of this clandestine filming was to catch men engaging in sexual acts with other men, and to prosecute them under the Ohio sodomy law. Convicted for up to 12 years; fathers, sons, brothers and grandfathers, rich and poor, black and white, businessmen and street hustlers - all were criminalised and sentenced, with the minimum jail term being one year.

This undercover filming of the ‘tearoom trade’ was a harsh example of the treatment of homosexuality in 1960s America. Uncovered whilst researching another film, William E. Jones has presented the footage barely edited as a document, which will be screened 24 hours a day for the duration of the exhibition at Swallow Street. Silent grainy footage shows a number of sexual rendezvous in two cubicles. The footage evokes a real sense of pathos with the knowledge that the men we see in front of us on camera were convicted; their lives inevitably changed forever. Society’s treatment of homosexuality drove gay men, in this case quite literally, underground.

The decision to screen Tearoom also resonates with a real sense of relevance today. Some 40 years on we still see issues and conflict arising regarding the law and homosexuality; the BNP with their archaic and hateful treatment of laws regarding homosexuality and  Los Angeles’ struggle with Proposition 8 (its provisions ban same-sex marriage).

There is a publication to accompany the exhibition which is based on the results of research on these cases and on the production of the surveillance film. The book includes a number of historical texts, as well as two new essays by the artist. Tearoom is extensively illustrated with more than 100 film stills, most of them in colour. The 2nd edition will be available at the opening.

Additional Works (PDF 295KB)

A Woman In Your Own Right, 2009

7 October – 7 November 2009

James Richards
Resolution

James Richards’ video and sculptural works use found and reworked material for both media. By assembling, reordering and adding sound, Richards’ montages produce a new series of narratives. The process of re-editing repositions the material — by subtracting specific events or by emphasising certain moments, Richards removes the particular and creates more enigmatic moments, with complex subtexts and purposeful ambiguity.

Richards creates a number of short video works, which he then curates into a single work or programme specifically for each exhibition.These pieces effectively act as vignettes arranged and sequenced for each showing, which fade and dissolve into each other, primarily in the form they take within the gallery, but also in his expanded practice.

Much of the emphasis in these works is the attempt to isolate a few instances from the original material, moments of slippage or singularity that result in works that can be romantic, funny or poignant.

A Woman In Your Own Right, Assertiveness And You is a self-help book by Anne Dickinson, published between 1982 and 1992. Made with a patented silver card cover, the book allows the reader to see his or her own face in the cover. Stacked one on top of the other, and towering at around 6’5” high, Resolution echoes the form of a minimal sculpture but with the flaws of handled and read second-hand books and the precariousness of its own height. Richards has been accumulating the book over some time, allowing the sculpture to grow more human in scale, and in turn more vulnerable and precarious.

James Richards (born Cardiff, 1983) lives and works in London.

Recent projects include a solo presentation at Tramway, Glasgow and participation in group shows including Nought To Sixty at the ICA, London, Generational: Younger Than Jesus at the New Museum, New York and A Song For Those In Search Of What They Came With, at Bellwether Gallery, New York.

His videos have been screened in curated programmes at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, Light Industry, New York and the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne. 

He is currently preparing material for a show curated by LUX at ZOO, London and is curating a series of screenings for FormContent, London.

Additional Works (PDF 447KB)

Philip, 2009
ink and acrylic on cardboard, 27 × 28 cm / 10.6 × 11 in

4 September – 3 October 2009

Erika Verzutti

Opening reception Thursday 3 September, 6 – 8pm

Erika Verzutti’s new works are examples of her ongoing interest in sculpture as a way of connecting art-making with objects from everyday life. She distorts and reassembles simple objects from art and nature using techniques such as casting, moulding and assembling. Often the sculptures maintain the image of the hand of the artist, with mistakes and accidents, and hand-manipulated surfaces amongst detailed casting.

Erika Verzutti cites the idea of a ‘fertile practice’, a literal organic growth of sculpture from top to bottom, as demonstrated by the use of objects such as pineapples, flowers, vases and octopi – things that structurally start at one point and grow outwards, as if the work could grow bottom to top, according to its own rules; the growth of sculpture alongside growth in nature. Art materials, animals and vegetables are presented with equal significance, the nature and signs of sculptural praxis are kept visually evident in the work as a way of keeping the practice of art-making interwoven with the subjects of everyday life.

Verzutti uses classical and traditional artistic media such as cast bronze, and ceramics, watercolours and oils, and contrasts them with the use of craft and domestic materials such as modeling clay and plasticine, rope, clay, and office stationary and incorporates the very objects used to make the works back into the sculptures. Constantly contrasting medium and subject, Verzutti plays with the symbolism of the object and how she has made it, as an investigation into the hierarchies in objects found around us, and that which we acknowledge as art.

By reintroducing an element that is traditionally loaded with the mythology of the artist - such as the painter’s brush - back into the work, alongside fruit and pieces of rope, she addresses the power of representation implicit in objects. By contrast, the vegetables, things that are seen as humble and basic, are treated in the same way.

Erika Verzutti was born in São Paulo, Brazil, 1971. She studied at Universidade Mackenzie, São Paulo, Brazil, and undertook postgraduate studies at Goldsmiths in 2000.

Verzutti has had solo exhibitions at Misako and Rosen, Tokyo, Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo, and Blow de la Barra, London, and has exhibited in group exhibitions at Centre Artistique et Culturel, Chamarande, France, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT), Japan, Barbican, London and MCO Arte Contemporânea, Porto, Portugal. She is currently undertaking a residency at Studio Voltaire until November, and lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.

Additional Works (PDF 316KB)

Detail from ‘To Pour Like English Taps’, 2009
42 × 59.5 cm / 17 × 24 in, watercolour on paper

16 July – 29 August

Mathew Sawyer

Opening reception Wednesday 15 July, 6–8 pm

From documenting the secret painting on the soles of his neighbours‘ shoes, putting notes in strangers‘ pockets, adding his silhouette to the inside of a light-bulb box, or making fragile sculptures from paper cups glued around his local town, Sawyer’s actions veer between the private and the public, using nominal gestures to create moments of great affect. Sawyer’s work literally extends from his house out to the people that confront his day to day life, from neighbours to local shopkeepers, and down the road to the jobcentre. Through these actions in the outside world, Sawyer creates the role of a self-scripting narrator or story-teller, casting strangers as the players and setting situations that implicate him into a disruption, however slight, in their lives.

Sawyer almost hovers on the edge of an existential crisis, constantly recreating situations to prevent himself from tipping into the void, using these moments to maintain control.

The resulting documentations of these efforts to integrate with other’s daily routines are often as understated as the action itself. A simple photograph and line of text extends the tragic-comic endeavour, imbuing it with a certain poetry or lyricism akin to the lyrics he writes and sings with his musical collective ‘Mathew Sawyer & The Ghosts’. Sawyer also makes a number of drawings and paintings, often documenting a recurring figure – a cartoonish man, grinning and carnivalesque, who leers over the shoulders of the unaware waiting for the moment to do them wrong.

The relationship between Sawyer’s more poetic gestures, and this character’s presence in the paintings, balance his interventions with a darker counterpoint.

Mathew Sawyer is a London based visual artist, musician and writer.

More from Mathew Sawyer & The Ghosts can be found at www.myspace.com/theghostsmyspace, and further works and information at www.mathewsawyer.co.uk. Recent exhibitions include a solo presentation at Sonia Rosso, Turin, The Bulletin Board, White Columns, New York, and the Prague Biennial 3.

Additional Works (PDF 624KB)

Africa, 2009
76.5 × 61 cm / 30 × 24 in, oil and gloss on canvas

29 April – 20 June

Gabriel Hartley

Opening reception Tuesday 28 April, 6–8 pm

Inaugural exhibition at Swallow Street

Gabriel Hartley’s work deals with abstraction and the abstract while always holding onto suggestions of an image or an experience: be it a Tudor house, a lamp, a hat, or a loaf of bread.

The relationship of the abstract to the figurative is at its most evident in the painted postcards where elements from the photographic image are mimicked, abstracted or denied through the application of paint.

The process involved in the paintings and sculptures creates the form almost in reverse. There is no obvious starting point or image, but through covering up, layering and excavating, objects (both in the painting and physically) are created that have associations that shift between the imagined, the remembered and the appropriated. The forms in the painting often shift in and out of focus, with the structure in the foreground becoming the background. This leads attention to the surface and to the stuff of paint itself; these take precedence over the importance of deciphering forms. The paint, in terms of surface, handling and touch is at times crusty, clunky, and scarred, while at other times iridescent, sensitive, and austere.

The paintings are heavily influenced by other parts of the practice (the objects and the postcards) and vice-versa. There is a grand scale to some of the works, but a similar emphasis is placed on the domestic sized objects and paintings. These objects are not studies but help to change the position of the paintings, and likewise the paintings distort the reading and experience of the objects. The works function almost as props alongside each other; but there is still a strong sense of the importance of the individual piece and the experience gained from looking closely.

Gabriel Hartley graduated from the Royal Academy in 2008. He was included in Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2007 and 2008, John Moores Painting prize 2008 and Jerwood Contemporary painting 2009.

Additional Works (PDF 2MB)