‘The Book of Sand, Julie F Hill
HS Projects is delighted to present The Book of Sand by Julie F Hill, an edition of prints from an ongoing series of works on paper exploring crystal growth generated by a machine learning algorithm trained on a dataset created from an encyclopaedia of crystals and minerals. The work contrasts the time of lived experience with the geological and technological.
Images are generated by sampling points in a machine learning model’s ‘latent space’ – the potentially limitless and unknowable space of the algorithmic imagination. The unfolding and refolding of geological material – or fundamental matter – through deep time cycles, is also potentially infinite.
Titled after the short story by Jorge Luis Borges that features a book with infinite, incomprehensible pages: ‘The Book of Sand … because neither the book nor the sand has any beginning or end.’
The Book of Sand
Digital print on archival paper
100 x 100 cms
unique edition print (left)
unique edition print (right)
Hill studied at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, and was Fellow in Digital Print at the Royal Academy Schools (2017–20). She took part in Land Art Agency’s Sustainable Futures: Outer Space residency series where she was partnered with environmental anthropologist Dr Valerie Olson (2021). In 2020 she was awarded the inaugural Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation as part of the Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year, Royal Museums Greenwich with her work being exhibited at The National Maritime Museum (2020–21), Jodrell Banks (2021) and Fox Talbot Museum (2021–22).
Hill was awarded an Arts Council Developing Your Creative Practice grant for her project Through Machine & Darkness, which has been looking at the use of AI and machine learning in examining astronomical datasets (2019–21).
Hill’s solo and 2 person exhibitions include: A Stone Sky, Thames-Side Studios Gallery, London, (2023); Earth, Water, Night, The Stone Space, London (2023); Uncertain Ruins, commissioned by Camden Council for Swiss Cottage Gallery (2019–2020), The Space Out of Time, Terminal Creek Contemporary/Capture Photography Festival, Vancouver, CA (2019); Of Stars and Chasms, ArthousSE1, London (2019).
Group shows include: Seeing Stars, The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds, UK (2022); Aora VI: Light curated by Jen Ellis online (2021); The AI Gallery, National Gallery X & National Gallery, online (2021–); Pokey Hat, VERBureau at Glasgow International Festival, Glasgow, UK (2016) and Single-Shot, Tate Britain, London, UK & touring (2007).
‘The Book of Sand’ is at 5 Marble Arch from July 2024 to January 2025.
‘Office Party’, Fabio Lattanzi Antinori
HS Projects is delighted to present ‘Office Party’, an exhibition of new and recent work by Fabio Lattanzi Antinori that raises questions around the production and consumption of data.
‘Office Party’ explores power dynamics, beliefs, and the way our perception of reality is collectively shaped and disseminated within society. Lattanzi Antinori’s work delves into the narratives of data, the agency of digital technology, and how these elements shape the future of society. The artworks in the exhibition are inspired by keywords, a term often used in digital marketing to describe words and phrases searched for by people online.
Every time we look for something online, our search terms are recorded and combined to build a personality profile for each one of us. This data is then used to forecast our future behaviours, predict the products or services we might want to buy, as well as understand and influence our political preferences and social behaviours. Behind the scenes, there exists a vast market that commodifies keywords. These keywords are gathered through elusive intelligent algorithms, creating profiles for everyone, which are then sold to advertisers and private companies. This business model has become dominant among companies, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo, that bring disruptive proprietary technologies to the masses.
The ‘Keywords Karaoke Machine’ is inspired by the way digital technology is shaping our notion of reality, our idea of history, and the way we interact with each other. The artwork plays songs with lyrics and music generated by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model, using collected geo-localised (to 12 Hammersmith Grove) keywords. The work will be constantly changing with new text and music experienced through headphones. We can also organise an artist led Karaoke event, when speakers and microphones will be added to allow viewers to actively perform. The objective being to engage with the tenants of the building and any other desired audiences. With a touch of humour and irony, this work aims to reflect upon the issues our society currently faces.
‘Highly Predictable’ presents the price of a selection of keywords, displayed on a custom- shaped screen made of bright LED lights. These are the result of online searches that the artist has found on Google and other platforms, which are relevant to the surrounding area of Hammersmith. The keywords and their prices are constantly changing on the sculpture’s display screen.
‘Fat Fingers’ alludes to the fact that secret extraction won’t leave anything unexploited and presents mistyped keywords, together with their prices. These words are selected from among those initially presented by Raymond Williams in his 1988 seminal book on particularly important words (now better known as keywords) which have been used to understand developing aspects of society over time.
‘Another Sign’ 2024, is part of series where specific quotes found in books, newspaper and web media, are isolated and then cut from security screens. The quote lends itself to different interpretations, it could be reminiscent of the incessant extractive and unsustainable nature of the current economic framework. A comment on overconsumption or an exhortation to try and overcome one’s limits. The security screen has become synonymous for vacant properties and the fear of risky investment, but also one that is transitory by nature, and which only exists for a limited time, between different chapters, one that waits patiently during difficult times, knowing that new opportunities will arise soon.
Fabio Lattanzi Antinori (Born 1971 Rome) studied MA Fine Art Computational (distinction) at Goldsmiths College and attended MoMA PS1 Summer School with Marina Abramovic. His recent exhibitions include Chronicles of Future Superheroes at the Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest and Kunsthalle Bega Timisoara, Chased by Unicorns at Pi Artworks London and Istanbul, and Frieze Sculpture at Regent’s Park, London. He has been awarded the Lucas Artists Fellowship and the First Plinth Award by the Royal Society of Sculptors and was selected for the MMCA International Artist in Residence Program in Seoul.
‘Office Party’ is at 12 Hammersmith Grove from April 2024 to October 2024.
‘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.