George Henry Longly at Studio_Leigh

Artist: George Henry Longly

Exhibition title: Indiscretion

Venue: Studio_Leigh, London, UK

Date: September 23 – October 29, 2016

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Studio_Leigh, London

Studio_Leigh is pleased to present Indiscretion – a new body of work by London-based British artist George Henry Longly.

Longly’s latest work builds on his long-term interests in consumer fantasy, branding and notions of museology. In Indiscretion, he invites viewers to see his work and a transformed gallery space as a whole and substantively in order to reconsider the status and narrative capacity of objects.

Informed by a range of disparate references including classicism, minimalism and the aesthetics of postmodern design, Longly employs marble, copper-plated aluminium and readymades to produce free-standing and wall-based works in a method of making which borrows from craftwork and industrial design processes. Encompassing a table, a plinth cum sports-bench, phallic hooks, a mirror, the works in the exhibition play with the possibilities of their associative potential and multivalency as autonomous objects. These objects acquire additional meaning through a hanging strategy, which positions Longly’s work directly into the space. Staged to hint at commercial display, the production line and even domestic interiors, the gallery space becomes a threshold to subvert and escape the taxonomical stresses that objects often labor under.

George Henry Longly works with sculpture, video, audio and performance. He lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include; We All Love your Life, Red Bull Studios New York; The Smile of a Snake, VALENTIN Paris (2016), Volume Excess, Koppe Astner Glasgow (2015); Hair Care, Jonathan Viner London (2014), GHL, Park Nights / Serpentine Gallery, London (2013), Pleats Please, Hanway Place, London (2013). He has been included in the group exhibitions; Prediction, Mendes Wood, São Paulo (2016) ; Mundus Muliebris, Cura Basement Rome (2016); The Boys, The Girls and The Political, Lisson Gallery London (2015); Septic Finger, Kostyal Stockholm (2015); Adventures in Bronze, Clay and Stone, Icastica Arezzo, Italy (2015); British Summer, Elizabeth Dee, New York (2015); The Crack-Up, ROOM EAST group show New York (2015); The Moving Museum Istanbul (2014); A Journey Through London Subculture, ICA (off-site) (2013), London; Reading the Surface, David Zwirner, London (2013); Abstract Cabinet, David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2013); Prodigal in Blue, Laura Bartlett, London (2013) and Managing Bounces, Cell project space, London (2013).

George Henry Longly, Love the way you lie, 2016
Oxidised copper plated steel, mirror, artificial flower stems, powder coated steel, 362 x 55 cm

George Henry Longly, Love the way you lie, 2016 (detail)
Oxidised copper plated steel, mirror, artificial flower stems, powder coated steel, 362 x 55 cm