Four artists reconfigure and manipulate the conventional idea of photography using strange new processes and transforming traditional methods in a new group show at Vitrine, London. A nostalgic exhibition, this collection of works looks back to the traditions of the medium with an incredibly contemporary eye.
Young British artist, Jack Brindley’s steel rods and weaving structures alter the gallery space, his flatbed prints on recycled aluminium winding through the other works on show. Scottish sculptor and photographer, Keith Farquhar, meanwhile challenges preconceptions of the photograph as representing truth with his hyper-realist inkjet-printed plastic bags, collected from his family members’ recycling.
Even further removed from the usual notions of photography, Charlie Godet Thomas uses cast sculpture, found objects, photography and painting. Images and objects are held still not by the lens but in cast rubber, or hidden behind undulating surfaces of paint. Otherwise ‘difficult’ imagery is liberated into the realm of colour, surface, weight and movement.
Canadian painter and draughtsman, Wil Murray, creates brash constructions – prints plastered together with pop-culture imagery and sweet-shop patterns. Photography and paint are melded as one, and so his work questions photography’s relationship to paint. The work is both gestural and structured, swathes of paint held contained in geometric frames and by tight linear abstractions.
Manchester born, Switzerland based artist Clare Kenny uses small assemblages in porcelain and glass, curled prints and at times bold splashes of paint on Perspex to draw fragmented narratives. Her assemblages, which roll, fold and fall from the gallery walls question ownership of an artwork – the environment affecting the piece – and constantly re-evaluating their own authenticity.
An evanescent fix: Jack Brindley, Keith Farquhar, Charlie Godet Thomas, Clare Kenny, Wil Murray, until 7 March, Vitrine Gallery, 183-185 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3UW, London.
Find out more at www.vitrinegallery.co.uk.
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Credits
1. Clare Kenny, The past was yours but the future is mine, 2012. Image courtesy of Vitrine & Jonathan Bassett.