‘Precarious Conditions of Uncertainty’, Andrea V Wright
HS Projects is delighted to present Precarious Conditions of Uncertainty, an exhibition of new and recent work by Andrea V. Wright, that teeters on the peripheries of sculpture and painting.
Transformation has always been an important component in Andrea V. Wright’s practice, through materials or methodology. Utilising geometric and organic structural references, her work employs a hybrid of controlled elements: highly finished clean lines, spatial arrangements and compositions. The contrasting materials (leather, latex, fabric, rubber) paired or arranged with structures, are often a record of surfaces, of moments in time where works are developed within the specific site context.
These elements are woven into her practice suggesting a veiled architecture that reflects the body’s structure and stance. Rigid substrates of wood and steel contrast against the soft supple weight of powdered latex rubber, pointing to the ways that we drape our own bodies in an attempt to disguise what lies within.
The seen and the unseen, the experienced and the intangible, are her building blocks, presenting a vertical stage onto which crafted or industrially manufactured materials are wrapped, pinned and draped. The formal language inherent in Wright’s work contrasts with the handmade that brings a human, haptic quality to it, reflecting the relationship between the body and the physical/emotional space we inhabit.
There is something about those in-between stages, which point to between becoming and disintegrating, that Wright’s work captures, giving it tension and power. Her materials are both subtly figurative and architectural: structure and surface, bone and skin. Treading a threshold that can be incredibly difficult to articulate, visualise or give form to, for Wright, these dynamic shifts in tension are as much a metaphysical journey, a play on the imagination, as something that is physical and present.
Andrea V. Wright is a multi-disciplinary visual artist currently based in Somerset. She graduated with a BA from Chelsea College of Art & Design in 1994 and embarked on a career in fashion, styling and music working with magazines such as The Face, Arena and Italian Vogue before re- engaging with her art practice in 2010. In 2016 she graduated from Bath School of Art & Design with an MFA, Fine Art (Distinction).
Recent group exhibitions include: Something Borrowed, Arthouse1, London (2017); Make_Shift, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London (2017); Notes on Painting, Koppel Project, London (2017); New Relics, Thames Side Studios, London (2018); Prevent This Tragedy, Post Institute, London, curated by Dateagle Art (2018); Index, World Unit Whitechapel, London, curated by ThorpStavri, London (2020); Trace ElementsI1971, The Factory Project, London, curated by Rosalind Davis (2021); Luma, London, curated by Jenn Ellis/AORA (2023).
Andrea V. Wright had her first solo show in 2019 at Galeria Nordes, Spain and was selected for the Jerwood Drawing Prize (2017), Royal Society of Sculptors Bursary Award (2017/18) and the Ingram Collection Purchase Prize (2019).
In 2021 she was awarded an AN Bursary for the PADA residency in Lisbon, Portugal which culminated in a solo show at the Foundry Gallery, London. She is currently a mentor for the MASS Sculpture School.
‘Precarious Conditions of Uncertainty’ is at Howick Place from December 2023 to June 2024.
‘Be Like Mike’, Chris Cawkwell
HS Projects is delighted to present ‘Be Like Mike’, an exhibition of new and recent work by Chris Cawkwell.
‘athletes around the world, we all have a crazy dream?
but, what are you gonna do to accomplish your crazy dream? you see, not all of us have eyes to see
not all of us have feet to walk
not all of us have hands to hold
but I know all of us have a heart of gold
so, what area you gonna do to accomplish your crazy dream? what are you gonna do?
’cause I know what I’m gonna do
I’m gonna do it
so, Just Do It’
– Demarjay Smith, NIKE ‘Just Do It’ campaign, June 2018
Nike is ubiquitous with basketball thanks to celebrity brand incarnate Michael Jordan. As brands continue to make inroads into the public domain through sponsorships of state schools, community sports teams and public space – swooshes and ‘Just Do It.’ slogans are a common place; adorning billboards; trainers; clothes; basketball courts; buildings; Instagram feeds (and navels).
Be Like Mike explores the material plenitude of brands such as Nike, and how the brand has transcended sport to encompass lifestyle choice(s) and politics. It is no longer a choice of this brand or that brand, we are buying into the dream, and the dream of celebrity such as Michael Jordan. The dream that our lives will somehow be enriched, even though we are poorer having spent our money.
Cawkwell’s work explores global marketing and consumer culture utilising contemporary technologies, performative and interactive elements to critique the social systems and processes which operate around us and highlight the rate at which products are consumed and commodified.
Born in Leicester 1985, Chris Cawkwell graduated with a Masters in Fine Art from Wimbledon College of Art in 2012. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including Vandal, The Fitzrovia Gallery, London (2023); The Exhibition, The Artists Contemporary, Hackney Downs Studios, London (2021); You Are What You Eat, Bohunk Institute, Nottingham (2016); Tokyo Wonder Site’s creator in residence program (2012); Project India (Asia Arts Projects & the 1%-ers art collective (2011). Cawkwell has completed residency programs at the Bohunk Institute, Nottingham, in preparation for solo show Sensorama (2013); Tokyo Wonder Site, Aoyama, (2012); Space 118, Mumbai, (2011). His work forms part of the permanent collection at Space 118. He is a founding member and director of non-profit, artist-led space (and collective) ArtLacuna, based in Clapham Junction, London.
‘Be Like Mike’ is at 12 Hammersmith Grove from July 2023 to February 2024.
‘Devotional Songs’, Rosie Edwards
HS Projects is delighted to present Devotional Songs, an exhibition of new and recent work by the 2022 Mark Tanner Sculpture Award recipient, Rosie Edwards.
Devotional Songs is an installation of loosely assembled elements that have all been wrapped in twine, by hand, by the artist. On display, here are forms born of the artist’s most recent findings: pop–up laundry baskets, a bundle of hula hoops, a discarded hose, cardboard tubes, empty yarn cones. The serendipitous encounter with such objects outside their intended context, reveals them in a new light. Freed from the limitations of their previously assigned function, they are released into the realm of pure material – of sculpture. The finding of these ready-made ‘gifts’, insights a glimmer of the miraculous which causes a stirring in the artist: a sort of spiritual communion in which objects appear to proclaim an answer to a question not yet had, and which seem to propose a challenge – which the artist devoutly obliges.
The wrapping or winding of these components in twine is a repetitive process. It is a disciplined, ascetic act: the optic pattern drawn across each surface is evidence of time spent in communion. The continuous rhythm of winding, though laborious, calms the mind. As the optic pattern begins to form, one enters into its groove: surface thoughts and worries slip away, allowing the mind to dance and play unhindered, creating a transcendental charge between the object and the maker.
Devotional Songs can be seen as a ‘combined intention’, or Sankalpa, formed not by the heart and mind but between the artist and objects. This installation sees a departure from the artist’s previous plaster sculptures. Made largely at home, after dark, they have a different energy, a greater intimacy. The individual structures, which make up this installation, are sculpturally light, insubstantial, their improvised nature and simple phrasing more akin to dance or drawing than sculpture. The collective hum of these quiet voices, chimeric and vibrating – as if in the process of transforming – is perhaps a calling towards a lighter way of being.
Edwards sees her sculptural practice as a collaboration with found objects, pure geometries and external limiting factors. She seeks to outsource creative decisions by following the prompts held within the objects and forms she encounters, which impart their own formatting or logic. Operating within this guise of extreme neutrality (quashing her own intentions), she follows their leads. In doing so, Edwards challenges the power of Objective Chance to reveal its teaching and gives voice to the poetry of its code.
Rosie Edwards studied BA Fine Art Textiles at Goldsmiths College, London (2002-2005) and MA Mixed Media Textiles at Royal College of Art, London (2010-2012). Recent solo exhibitions include: Genetic Material, Mark Tanner Sculpture Award Exhibition, Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre / Standpoint Gallery, London / Cross Lane Projects, Kendal (2022) touring solo show; A Real Job, Wearite clothing factory, Tottenham, London (2018); Light Materialty, Second Home, Hanbury Street, London ((2014); Everything Must Go!, Thomas Brothers DIY, Archway, London (2014); Hoard, A Million Miles a Minute; Windows project, Archway, London, Commissioned by Arts Council England and A.I.R. (2013).
‘Devotional Songs’ is at Howick Place from June 2023 to December 2023.