(Re)Structure
Garret Beatty / Bernie Colhoun / Ann Marie Webb | April 2012
Curated by Jennie Taylor
For this exhibition, titled (Re)Structure, both planning and construction are understood as reflections of our interaction with built environments. Each work is a response to a material or idea that already exists but is reconfigured for investigation. Shown through a range of practices from the manipulation of materials and visual articulation of notions surrounding the future and the impossible, the coming together of these three artists provides a scenario where elements of the beginning, duration and consequences of planning and building confront us.
With her latest work Bernie Colhoun continues investigating urban construction. Colhoun mimics raw materials with synthetic strips in By Way of Clarity. Through planning and placement she breaks down the elements of a structure presented for reassessment. Using pvc foam, the most synthetic material available, Colhoun wants to respond to her experience working on a construction site. She was struck by the wastage of plastic packaging and brings her own reaction to the fore in this work. Dominant by scale, By Way of Clarity dwarfs a demonstration of possibility in the piece Perpetual Stretch. Amongst these conflicting works Colhoun shows two artist books Sites and Roadsides. Through photography, these works reveal the intrinsic value of her experience on construction sites and her investigations of construction work in her surrounding environment. To describe her latest work Colhoun states ‘Here lies a monolith to urban construction, may it rest in pieces’
The three recent paintings by Ann Marie Webb look at the fragility of being human and persistence in creating a future. Her practice deals with ‘the sincere want to move forward into tomorrow, and to build a utopian vision for the future” Webb is interested in how our ability to change is greatly effected by our perspective on life and the world we plan and build around us. Impossible Future inhabits a vast setting in the space; its two main components, delicacy and urgency give the work the persistence and fragility Webb speaks about. The paintings Building I and Building II hint that some of this persistence has manifested into a structure embedded in uncertainty.
Garret Beatty’s Linear Landscape explores potential in gesso, what is usually a primer in painting. Discarded boards originally used in construction were reclaimed by Beatty and taken as a starting point for the piece. Boards that were probably a part of scaffolding became the surface for Beatty to make the work. Beatty then pushes gesso to an immaculate surface, further utilising a material that is accessible. From working up the material he is interested in creating a false perspective. Straight lines are cut and crossed over to give an illusion of a place. Trickery is used as a tool to understand our ability to see a result or an illusion and which one we run with.
The space is on the 1st floor of a listed building; this presents a protection of heritage to be a platform for the exhibition. The challenge of using a room of this nature, where parts of the walls and ceiling could not be touched gives the works and fittings a temporary and permanent tone. Using Georgian interior as a backdrop, the exhibition responds to the idea of planning and building in context of what is already there, and asks us to examine how close results are to our expectations.
Image: Bernie Colhoun Perpetual Stretch 2012
Garret Beatty / Bernie Colhoun / Ann Marie Webb | April 2012
Curated by Jennie Taylor
For this exhibition, titled (Re)Structure, both planning and construction are understood as reflections of our interaction with built environments. Each work is a response to a material or idea that already exists but is reconfigured for investigation. Shown through a range of practices from the manipulation of materials and visual articulation of notions surrounding the future and the impossible, the coming together of these three artists provides a scenario where elements of the beginning, duration and consequences of planning and building confront us.
With her latest work Bernie Colhoun continues investigating urban construction. Colhoun mimics raw materials with synthetic strips in By Way of Clarity. Through planning and placement she breaks down the elements of a structure presented for reassessment. Using pvc foam, the most synthetic material available, Colhoun wants to respond to her experience working on a construction site. She was struck by the wastage of plastic packaging and brings her own reaction to the fore in this work. Dominant by scale, By Way of Clarity dwarfs a demonstration of possibility in the piece Perpetual Stretch. Amongst these conflicting works Colhoun shows two artist books Sites and Roadsides. Through photography, these works reveal the intrinsic value of her experience on construction sites and her investigations of construction work in her surrounding environment. To describe her latest work Colhoun states ‘Here lies a monolith to urban construction, may it rest in pieces’
The three recent paintings by Ann Marie Webb look at the fragility of being human and persistence in creating a future. Her practice deals with ‘the sincere want to move forward into tomorrow, and to build a utopian vision for the future” Webb is interested in how our ability to change is greatly effected by our perspective on life and the world we plan and build around us. Impossible Future inhabits a vast setting in the space; its two main components, delicacy and urgency give the work the persistence and fragility Webb speaks about. The paintings Building I and Building II hint that some of this persistence has manifested into a structure embedded in uncertainty.
Garret Beatty’s Linear Landscape explores potential in gesso, what is usually a primer in painting. Discarded boards originally used in construction were reclaimed by Beatty and taken as a starting point for the piece. Boards that were probably a part of scaffolding became the surface for Beatty to make the work. Beatty then pushes gesso to an immaculate surface, further utilising a material that is accessible. From working up the material he is interested in creating a false perspective. Straight lines are cut and crossed over to give an illusion of a place. Trickery is used as a tool to understand our ability to see a result or an illusion and which one we run with.
The space is on the 1st floor of a listed building; this presents a protection of heritage to be a platform for the exhibition. The challenge of using a room of this nature, where parts of the walls and ceiling could not be touched gives the works and fittings a temporary and permanent tone. Using Georgian interior as a backdrop, the exhibition responds to the idea of planning and building in context of what is already there, and asks us to examine how close results are to our expectations.
Image: Bernie Colhoun Perpetual Stretch 2012
