LIMINAL STATES (2016)

Group show at the Gallery on the Corner, Battersea London.

Curated by Aisling Keavey and Rena Strati

Artists: Aisling Keavey, Ban Yuan-Chang, Mircha Ivens, Nicholas Chrysostomou, Tom Witherick, Theo Welch-King, Adam Spain, Carolin Koss, Ilona Balaga, Lemia Bodden, Naifei Wei and Robin Clarke.

LIMINAL STATES was group exhibition curated by Aisling Keavey and Rena Strati, showcasing artists working in varied and distinctly different media, but brought together by the broad theme of metamorphosis and change. The exhibition was held at Gallery on the Corner in Battersea Park in London in April 2016.

Aisling Keavey’s concertina photo-book, Accidental Journeys references the metamorphosis and change brought about by immigration and the massive change the Irish Diaspora faced when immigrating from Ireland to England. The photographs connect the contemporary migration journey with that of the historical, embossed with dates of famine ship sailings from Dublin and Cobh to America in the 1840s.

Ban Yuan-Chang’s Three Generations is an elegant nod to minimalism within the themes of geopolitical art practice. Three Generations is from an ongoing series of works entitled Mediation From the Empire Legacy. The research behind this series of works seeks to uncover the ridiculousness of the ‘whisper’ in the cultural object and illustrate the boundary after the globalisation generation.

Mircha Ivens’ drawings Afternoon Interferences is a series of two drawings inspired by the idea of hidden wireless frequencies or radio frequencies that we are not able to see with our bare eyes.

Nicholas Chrysostomou’s architectural drawings and photographs, Investigating Hotel Guimard: Sinuous Sensuality, interrogates the sensuality of architecture and the metamorphosis it goes through.

Tom Witherick’s paintings entitled Night That Never Happened, Untitled and July (Piper’s Hole) reference the metamorphosis that oil paint undergoes as it is applied to a canvas.

Drawing the upper space together is Theo Welch-King’s incised marble block with painted steel support, a very elegant and stripped back sculpture.

Adam Spain’s large scale emulsion paintings installed on the landing between the upper and lower floors of the gallery lend a sense of flow to the audience, drawing the eye through the bright purple coloured paintings and down the stairs to the lower floor. King and Queen are painted in vivid regal purple, adding a pop of colour to the space.

Carolin Koss’ film The Fragile is a dark and brooding take on the theme of metamorphosis and change.

Ilona Balaga’s drawings and collages reference the fear of change and the fear of the future.

Lemia Bodden’s mobile phone image of nude figures are an abstract and sensual take on the traditional nude figure.

At the back of the lower floor, in an alcove is Naifei Wei’s Word Chain, twelve bound books embossed with various words in gold lettering. In the participatory work, participants are asked to describe a word or to summarise a paragraph. The first participant writes a few sentences to describe the starting word; then another participant summarises sentences from the last person into one word without knowing the original word; the word from the second participant is then described in sentences by the third participant; and finally the sentences are summarised into a word by the fourth participant. Like “Chinese Whisper,” the game goes on and on— from a word to descriptions, from descriptions to a word, through which the matter of translation and interpretation of certain notions that are crucial to our current globalised society is explored.

In the other alcove at the back of the lower space is Robin Clarke’s Untitled, acetate overlaid photographs of railway bridges and street corners. These pieces add a pop of colour to the otherwise bare white wall of the enclosed downstairs space.

Exhibition documentation:

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