Monday 15 August 2011

ArtSlant Review: Minor Revisions at Tenderpixel Gallery



Found objects take pride of place in Minor Revisions, Tenderpixel’s new exhibition in which works from seven artists reappropriate pre-existing items that have never functioned as art before and turn them into exhibition pieces. Sure, conceptual art is not everyone’s cup of tea and artistic appropriation has had its detractors ever since Duchamp debuted his urinal, but this small group of contemporary artists are by no means the only ones still operating in this particular mode of artistic practice.

What this collection of work does reveal is how many of these modern found objects are two-dimensional printed images, be that a found photo or an envelope lining or a catalogue. The artists tamper with the image, layer up their own ideas onto what’s already there, like Rebecca Chalmers, who adds to the linear insides of found envelopes to evolve them out of pure design and into drawing... (read more)

ArtSlant Review: Look With All Your Eyes, Look at Frith Street Gallery



This year’s summer exhibition at Frith Street Gallery is a very monochrome affair, much like our summer in fact. Again it brings together works from the gallery’s stable of artists in a loosely-themed group show, this time entitled Look With All Your Eyes, Look, examining the concept of materiality and/or illusion in art through painting, sculpture and photography.

It’s much smaller than 2010’s After the Volcano, occupying just the upstairs gallery and presenting work from only eight artists across an open-plan space. But space and sparseness (along with subdued colour) are key here. Just take the sculptures from Sara Barker and Rudolf Polanszky that sit in the centre of the room – both are marked by a distinct lack of mass and a quality of containing empty space within their structures (be that Barker’s spindly aluminium frames or Polansky’s Perspex boxes) rather than being a manipulated mass themselves.

Rachel Adams’ pieces have more of a form but still a sense of lightness – she takes sheets of paper and crumples them into large forms which suggest much more weight and solidity than they actually possess... (read more)
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