Posts Categorized: Exhibitions
‘Cluedo Part II’, Artlab (Charlotte Cullinan + Jeanine Richards)
‘Cluedo Part II’ was an exhibition of recent work by Artlab (Cullinan Richards), a London-based artistic collaboration between Charlotte Cullinan and Jeanine Richards, who since 1997 have been producing work ranging from painting to performance to film, fusing personal histories with fiction to confront shared social and cultural issues.
The exhibition included a specially commissioned piece, double self portrait ’Cluedo’, of the artist-pair dressed in Marks & Spencer clothes, as a comically self-mirroring partnership, as well as photo-documentation works from their art programme at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, during which they built structures in which to house the practices of other artists.
‘Artlab’s practice and production is complex and multi-layered and one where the art product – if not indeed the situation created, support structure erected, or social scenario enacted – often takes on the final form of documentation, as in their nearly invisible installation at the Marks & Spencer headquarters in Baker Street which surfaced as photo-documentation contextualised within the installation of an improvised cardboard dressing room and strip-lighting for a show in Cologne’ – John Slyce, Artlab 021.
‘Cluedo Part II’ was exhibited in 2001 and was part of the Marks & Spencer Head Office Cultural Programme, 1993 – 2004.
Jenny Chong, Nikolaj Larsen, Dominic Lewis, Emily Webber
HS Projects commissioned Jenny Chong, Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen, Dominic Lewis and Emily Webber for a site specific exhibition at Marks & Spencer’s headquarters in Baker Street. During that time, Marks & Spencer was undergoing a period of change and the artists made work that responded to that change.
Jenny Chong, inspired by the memorials in the building’s receptions to M&S staff who died in the two world wars, created a wall based text installation as a ’memorial’ to all existing M&S employees working at the Marks & Spencer’s headquarters.
Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen explored the idea of ‘Forms’, creating a ‘cinematic’ commentary on the process of change Marks & Spencer was undergoing. A performative work, ‘Forms’ morphed from an informational gathering administrative form into an abstraction of forms mimicking the effect of a flick book as the viewer passed along the corridor.
Emily Webber was inspired by the geography of the space, a corridor that snaked its way through various departments. She explored ideas around corridors of power, labyrinths and infinity by documenting a previous exhibition in the space and then manipulating the images to create a sense of an endless corridor with no beginning or end.
Dominic Lewis took his inspiration from the pockmarked surface of the walls with their history of pin holes and pencil marks from previous exhibitions. Lewis photographed specific sites with a large format camera and then transformed the image through a re-contextualization by mounting A4 sized prints onto unprimed 10mm thick A4 MDF boards, which were then re-installed over or adjacent to the documented wall, creating a dialogue between the idea of value, authenticity and ownership.
The exhibition was curated by HS Projects in 2001 as part of the Marks & Spencer Head Office Cultural Programme, 1993-2004.
Alan Brooks, Robert Davies, Andy Harper
HS Projects curated an exhibition of recent work by Alan Brooks, Robert Davies and Andy Harper that examined the impact of technology on painting and how artists apply this in their practice.
Alan Brooks photocopied Gainsborough’s sketch books onto acetate sheets and projected the image onto giant canvasses to meticulously hand paint all the visual flaws. By layering 18th century botanical images over details from the sketch books, stacking multiple acetate copies on-top of each other and projecting the multi-layered complex image, Brooks created a misleadingly flat two-dimensional work.
Sourcing film from World Cup tournaments, Robert Davies scrutinized the footage to uncover the decisive moments, or ‘epiphanies’, from the history of the world’s most popular sporting event. Each picture is a detail from a crucial passage of play and is imprinted on our collective memory.
Andy Harper used painting to create a mechanistic illusion with meticulous tiny brush strokes, each stroke removing the top layer of paint to create an impression of a mass produced mechanistic image, redolent of wall paper.
Works by Alan Brooks, Robert Davies, Andy Harper were exhibited in 2003 as part of the Cable & Wireless Exhibition Programme, 1992 – 2006.