From can see to can’t see
Digital landscapes
9th September 2021 - 21st October 2021
Andy Holden, Eyes in Space (Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will)
Traditional ways of seeing are based on geometric perspective - shared by human vision, painting and film. New technologies have collapsed these physical distances and so uprooted the familiar patterns of perception on which our culture and politics have been grounded. The distinctions between near and far, between an object and a horizon against which the object stands out have been erased by the real-time electronic transmission of information. If information from any point can be transmitted with the same speed, the concepts of near and far, horizon, distance and space itself no longer have any meaning. This is all familiar territory - thirty years ago Paul Virilio, in his essay Big Optics, mourned the destruction of distance, geographic grandeur and the vastness of natural space - the vastness which guaranteed a time delay between events and our reactions. (Lev Manovich, 1996 Cinema and Telecommunication/Distance and Aura).
This crisis of seeing, the instability of relations between subject and object of vision, first led to film’s penetration into every aspect of contemporary existence – even the organization of our cities. Cinematisation produced a ‘flattened’ public sphere, in which the three-dimensional space of the city square was absorbed into the surface of the screen. New technologies have caused a further diminishing and finally complete elimination of spatial distance, the distance between the subject who is seeing, and the object being seen. Through this flattening and the dislocation of time and place, we have found that the unceasing spectacle of the urban and natural environment, stripped the human eye of its ability to look. As a result, the gaze was directed from us, rather than by us.
We might feel that we can grasp the majesty of the pyramids, the beauty of a far-flung wilderness, or the haunting atmosphere of an interior, but, if experienced through a screen, our understanding is distorted. In this second SuperRare exhibition with GRA, the artists consider natural and man-made environments, interior and exterior landscapes, and investigate the possibilities and distortions of the new technologies on our ways of understanding the world around us. They consider the magical possibilities of the digital realm as a positive companion to ‘real’ experience. They explore what it is to experience and be confused by it.
James Scott Brooks, Postcard Typologies: Italian Cities
James Scott Brooks
Born in Exeter, UK. Lives and works in London, UK artist interested in system-based art making which informs the numerous ways he translates specific sound and visual information.
He adopts the position of being the manual interpreter of the respective - data/ image/ recording/ text, thus, introducing a new representation and context for the selected
material. Exhibitions include: British Museum, London, Stadël Musuem, Frankfurt, Tate Britain, London, Nakata Museum, Japan.
Rebecca Harper
Rebecca Harper was born in London in 1989, where she lives and works. She studied at UWE Bristol, the Royal Drawing School, Turps Art School (Postgraduate’s). Harper was Artist in Residence at The Santozium Museum, Santorini 2019, and Artist in Residence for the Ryder Project Space at A.P.T Studios, Deptford in 2018-19 before becoming a studio and committee Member in 2019. She was winner of the ACS Studio Prize in 2018. Chameleon, her debut solo show at Anima Mundi met with great acclaim including a review in the FT by Jackie Wullshlager. Most recently Rebecca has her second solo with Anima Mundi Gallery 2021 and was selected for The John Moore’s Painting Prize 2021, and previously selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2018 at South London Gallery. Other curated shows include Huxley Parlour, Public Gallery, The Royal Academy Summer Show, Christies London and New York, Flowers Gallery, Paul Stolper Gallery, Turps Art Gallery and Arusha Gallery. Her work is on long term display in the Albright Collection at Maddox Street Club in London curated by Beth Greenacre and at the Santozeum Museum in Santorini. Harper is represented in many public and private collections internationally including the Ullens and the Royal Collections.
Andy Holden
Andy Holden, born and living in Bedford, UK, is an artist whose work spans sculpture, large installations, painting, pop music, performance, and multi-screen videos. Often starting with an examination of an anecdote or a personal encounter, these moments are then unpacked and expanded in an attempt to make sense of a larger philosophical idea.
More recently, through Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape (2011-2017), Holden has been using the allegory of the cartoon as a way to comprehend our fragmented and illogical contemporary landscape. Specifically, how self awareness, a vital ingredient of the cartoon law, ‘Anybody suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation’, helps us understand the world we inhabit.
Previous works have included collaborations with his father, ornithologist Peter Holden, examining our relationship with the natural world (Natural Selection, Artangel, 2017), a large knitted replica of a chunk of pyramid and a video of returning this piece of rock to the pyramid from which it was taken (Pyramid Piece, Tate, 2010), a seven-screen video installation which recreated his teenage manifesto which called for ‘Maximum Irony! Maximum Sincerity’ (Towards a Unified Theory of M!MS, Spike Island, 2013), and a library of books and sculptures dedicated to the notion of ‘Thingly Time’ (Kettles Yard, 2011). Holden performs regularly and releases records with his band The Grubby Mitts and runs the project space Ex-Baldessarre in Bedford. His work is included in the collection of Tate and Arts Council England and in 2017 was nominated for the Future Generations Art Prize in Kiev. His work will be included in the 2021 British Art Show.
Hannah Murgatroyd
Hannah Murgatroyd is a painter whose work is underpinned by drawing and writing, forming an open narrative of association. Characterised by subtle layers of light and colour, her work centres on figures journeying through a world both ancient and modern and, yet-to-exist. A graduate of the Royal College of Art and the Royal Drawing School, Hannah is a mentor for Turps Art School in London. Recent shows include ‘Hawks in her Hair’ at Alice Black Gallery, UK, 2021 and ‘Monster / Beauty: An Exploration of the Female / Femme Gaze’ at Lychee One, UK, 2020, curated by Marcelle Joseph.
Lottie Stoddart
Lottie is a writer and painter whose works explores varied forms of enchantment. In her paintings, the frame creates a boundary to the outside world, within which the residue of a story or memory plays out in an illusionistic space, operating under internal laws. The use or depiction of humble materials with a reduced economy of form, plays with registers of familiarity and ubiquity. The rendering of different surfaces in their collaged, shallow spaces, signal diverse reflections of the world, often humorously and playfully remembered, imagined, warped, reduced. In the work, theatre staging, storybook worlds and the computer screen meets the history of still life and metaphysical painting.
Lottie attended the Turps Painting Programme at Turps Art School and received the 2021 APT & Fenton Trust Mentoring Award.
Phoebe Unwin
Phoebe Unwin’s paintings explore perceptions of everyday experience. Her invented figurative images and their corresponding relation to mark, scale and colour, fuse to visually articulate the variety of feelings invested in looking.
Born in Cambridge in 1979, Unwin lives and works in London. She studied at Newcastle University (1998-2002) and Slade School of Fine Art (2003-2005). Recent solo exhibitions include Iris, Towner Gallery, Eastbourne, UK (2019); Field, Maramotti Collection, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2018); Pregnant Landscape, Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London, UK (2018).
Unwin’s work is held public collections including Tate Collection, London; Maramotti Collection, Reggio Emilia, Italy; Arts Council Collection, UK; British Council Collection; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; The Government Art Collection,UK and The Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, USA.
