Artists: Matt Ager, Jonathan Baldock, Becky Beasley, Neil Haas, May Hands, Thomas Hutton, Michael Iveson, Lauren Keeley, Lawrence Lek, Ben Sansbury, Marco Strappato, Amy & Oliver Thomas-Irvine, Felix Jung & Marc Einsiedel, We are visual
Exhibition title: Maybe your lens is scratched?
Curated by: Bianca Baroni and Alex Meurice
Venue: Slate Projects, London, UK
Date: June 24 – July 24, 2016
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Slate Projects
‘Maybe your lens is scratched?’ hinges on a relationship between space and image disrupted by economic and political changes (rising inequality, international capital, privatization of space, shell corporations). Architectural space, as it is experienced and circulated, is flattened into images. In turn, images are projected onto and into buildings. The city grows a new skin, a screen onto which we project our desires of the future in the language of an imagined past. Polarised glass, glossy brochures, Instagram feeds, trompe l’oeil architecture, façadism, tax codes and ideology made stone. Each twist of the screw restages our experience of space as an act of looking. The ease with which we can ‘picture’ ourselves in a space motivates our evaluation and valuation of the same space.
A concrete wall, three columns and a recessed corner, fresh from rain and stained by the traffic: could this be a potential space? Not quite, but maybe my lens is scratched? Felix Jung and Marc Einsiedel are in London to extend their project Potenzieller Raum, previously executed in Hamburg and Brussels, for this new group exhibition at the Averard Hotel. Cataloguing and re-representing the ‘lost’ corners of the city as potential spaces for subcultural, collective and alternative forms of living, the artist duo ‘We are visual’ operates on the edge of the invisible and the visible, the real and the ideal. Their rhetorical question goes to the heart of this exhibition’s attempt to intercede in the fluid exchange of sight and space.
The Averard Hotel, a grand nineteenth century mansion, disused while awaiting renovation into luxury apartments, is a palimpsest of London’s history, an “echochamber of the whole politic” (Richard Wentworth). It embodies the ceaseless folding and unfolding of image into space, and vice versa, a crease in the smooth surface of the city, an essay on the history of taste. The Averard Hotel hosts fifteen artists whose work questions our familiarity with experiencing space through image alone.
We would like to thank the artists and their representatives for their kind support.
Becky Beasley, Astray (Part II): Smoking, 2016
Becky Beasley, Astray (Part II): Smoking, 2016
Becky Beasley, Brocken IV, 2009. Courtesy of Laura Bartlett Gallery, London
Becky Beasley, Astray (Part II): Smoking, 2016
Becky Beasley, Astray (Part II): Smoking, 2016
Neil Haas, Yellow and blue breakfast, 2014
Lauren Keeley, Ode on an Urn (Newcomb/Wedgwood), 2016
Courtesy of Supplement Gallery, London
Thomas Hutton, Portal, Key, Armature, 2016
Thomas Hutton, Portal, Key, Armature, 2016
Thomas Hutton, Portal, Key, Armature, 2016
Lawrence Lek, Memory Palace (Tabularium), 2014
Lawrence Lek, Memory Palace (Tabularium), 2014
Neil Haas, Bather reclining near water, 2016, Daydreams, 2016
Matt Ager, Long handle Reach Shoe, 2016
Michael Iveson, Apartment slicker (Averard Hotel), 2016
Matt Ager, Long handle Reach Shoe, 2016
Michael Iveson, Apartment slicker (Averard Hotel), 2016
Ben Sansbury, Untitled (Laocöon), 2016
Ben Sansbury, Untitled (Laocöon), 2016
Michael Iveson, Apartment slicker, 2016
May Hands, Beneath the Averard Walls (Pink, iridescent and orange), 2016
Ben Sansbury, Untitled (Splint splinth), 2016
We Are Visual (Felix Jung & Marc Einsiedel), POTENTIAL SPACE (LONDON), 2016
We Are Visual (Felix Jung & Marc Einsiedel), POTENTIAL SPACE (LONDON), 2016
We Are Visual (Felix Jung & Marc Einsiedel), POTENTIAL SPACE (LONDON), 2016
Matt Ager, Wear me, Work me, Love me, 2016
May Hands, Averard Wardrobe Painting (Purple, blue, yellow), 2016
May Hands, Averard Wardrobe Painting (Purple, blue, yellow), 2016
May Hands, Averard Wardrobe Painting (Purple, blue, yellow), 2016
Matt Ager, Wear me, Work me, Love me, 2016
Lauren Keeley, Bookshelf, 2016
Amy & Oliver Thomas-Irvine, Milieu, 2016
Marco Strappato, Untitled (Sunset in Utopia), 2015
Jonathan Baldock, The Soft Machine (performance costume 1), 2014
Amy & Oliver Thomas-Irvine, 5 Volt, 2016
Marco Strappato, Untitled (Sunset in Utopia), 2015
Amy & Oliver Thomas-Irvine, Milieu, 2016, 5 Volt, 2016
Jonathan Baldock, The Soft Machine (performance costume 1), 2014
Marco Strappato, Untitled (Sunset in Utopia), 2015