‘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.