Antimonumental is an exhibition of new and recent sculptures made by eleven artists living and working across the UK that engages with notions of fallibility, precarity and ephemerality in our time of global climate catastrophe.
Antimonumental takes cues from the 2008 exhibition Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century (New Museum, New York) that focused on a specific form of contemporary sculpture that ‘displayed a distinct informality: conversational, provisional, at times even corroded and corrupted, they are un- heroic and manifestly unmonumental’. Sixteen years later this attitude towards materiality and making sculpture seems even more critical in a time of economic precarity and environmental uncertainty.
Antimonumental showcases a range of artistic practices operating within a sculptural framework that question diverse subjects and pertinent themes including contested statues, colonialism, migration, junk space, domestic violence, politics of memory, becoming other, structures of power, post-human futures, ambivalence and much between.
Visitors to the exhibition can expect to experience a dynamic exhibition of sculpture including site-specific works, made during a short residency period, that engage directly with the unique architecture of the spacious gallery. On site constructions will include Erika Trotzig’s teetering structures of foam and wood, Cecile Johnson Soliz’s twisted newsprint composition moving across the walls, Donna Mitchell’s improvised construction that relocates materials collected at a tin mine waste dump into Thames-Side Studios Gallery.
As a newly formed collective assembled by artist Kate McLeod, a critical conversation is emerging between these antimonumental artists who find a shared voice and attitude in producing and presenting sculptures that rejoice in mutability, modularity, awkward relationships, ready-mades, absurdity, futility, failure, gesture, reclaiming, re-appropriating, reusing, repurposing, wobbly eruptions, things cobbled together, erasure.
All the sculptures presented in Antimonumental embody notions of fallibility, yet however tremulous these objects appear on the surface they also belie a resilience and resistance that demand a reinvestment and investigation into objects that already exist in the world today.
Thames-Side Studios Gallery
Thames-Side Studios
Harrington Way, Warspite Road
Royal Borough of Greenwich
London SE18 5NR
Open Thursday-Sunday, 12-5pm, during exhibitions.
For general Thames-Side Studios Gallery enquiries please email info@thames-sidestudios.co.uk
For, As Old As the Hills, David presents a series of "human-scale" sculptural assemblages that explore the interplay between art and architecture within the unique context of the ZigZag building in Glastonbury. These artworks have been carefully adapted to the distinctive atmosphere and history of the space, intermingling with other artworks in a dynamic dialogue. The building's storied architecture, with its rich layers of time and transformation, serves as a fitting backdrop for David's sculptures, which similarly reflect themes of change and renewal.
The scarred, textured surfaces of David’s pieces evoke the weathered interior and worn façade of the ZigZag building, which stands as a testament to Glastonbury’s own layered history. By working with a muted, earthy colour palette, David’s sculptures resonate with the building’s aesthetic, blurring the boundaries between artwork and environment. Many of the materials used to create these fractured sculptures have been salvaged from the River Cam near Cambridge, where David lives on a houseboat, further emphasising themes of recovery and rebirth. These forgotten objects, once discarded, have been repurposed and transformed into otherworldly entities, now taking their chances in this new environment for a brief yet impactful moment in time.
At the heart of this collection of sculptural works is a deep reflection on our relationship with nature, ecology, and the precariousness of life. Informed by concerns about the environment and sustainability, David’s sculptures prompt conversations about survival, adaptation, and transformation, both locally and globally.
WIHH Gallery hosts the group exhibition
LOOP
presenting moving images by members of the international artists group
Rhythm Section and guests
Anneke Bosma
Anneke Coster
Artemis Potamianou
Daniel Geiger
David Kefford
Dmytro Goncharenko
Gracia Khouw
HoBo ( Van ‘t Hoog & Bosma )
Iemke van Dijk
Lies Neve
Liu Ke
Lon Godin
Michael Wright
Oleksiy Koval
Tang Xiao
Thomas Rieger
Veronika Wenger
Wright & Van ‘t Hoog
Curated by Anneke Bosma, Henriëtte van 't Hoog and Lon Godin
Vernissage: Friday 31 May, 17-20h, by Michael Wright
with
an audiovisual performance by O l a Havrylenko a n dD m y t r oGoncharenko and a live painting performance by The Beautiful FormulaCollective:Daniel Geiger, Oleksiy Koval, Thomas Rieger, Veronika WengerandMichaelWright
Exhibition Loop
24 May - 30 June 2024
WIHH Gallery
Reguliersdwarsstraat 73 1017 BK Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Opening hours: Tue-Sat, 12-18h WIHHgallery@gmail.com
Test Sites brings together two Cambridge-based artists—Sam Jury and David Kefford —for the first time and launches Quip & Curiosity’s new exhibition programme for 2024. The gallery will become a ‘test site’ during a short residency exploring ideas of displacement and dis-ease in both the landscape and the self. Through restaging multiple works on paper, small-scale sculptures and moving image, the artists will attempt to ask what it means to be ‘out of time’ and how this speaks to psychological and emotional states.
Opening times and events
Fri 15th March: Open by appointment
Sat 16th March: 1–5pm, drop in
Fri 22nd March:
Opening event: 6–8pm More details
Live sound event: 8–10pm More details
Sat 23rd March: 1–5pm, drop in
Other times by appointment until Thu 4th April
David's Solo Exhibition, In Search of a Higher Shelf, at Quip & Curiosity in Cambridge has been reviewed by Matthew Bowman in Dec 22 - Jan 23 edition of Art Monthly