Excavation: Macro to the Micro
About the exhibition
Excavation: Macro to the Micro is a journey of exploration and discovery, from the broad and expansive to the detailed and intricate. The exhibition presents 22 artists, in five sections, with the starting point being large scale paintings.
Curated by Deborah Smith
Deborah Smith is a curator and collections consultant who explores different strategies for collaboration and the presentation of interdisciplinary practices. She has delivered exhibitions, large-scale commissions, interwoven with programmes of learning, engagement and interpretation.
Artists 24
Artists 24
Works 68
About the exhibition
Curator
Deborah Smith
Dates
12 Sept - 06 Dec 2024
Curator: Deborah Smith
Exhibition Design: KHBT
Excavation: Macro to the Micro is a journey of exploration and discovery, from the broad and expansive to the detailed and intricate. The exhibition presents 22 artists, in five sections, with the starting point being large scale paintings – the macro – by Jenny Saville, Tim Stoner, Nigel Cooke, Álvaro Barrington and Pam Evelyn.
Nuanced layers of information or concepts within each of the paintings inspired the work – the micro – of the following artists on view: HelenA Pritchard, Oliver Beer, Renee So, Louise Giovanelli, Nicola Ellis, Leo Fitzmaurice, Anne Tallentire, Nnena Kalu, George Shaw, Isabelle Young, Alice Channer, James Collins, Tanoa Sasraku, Emii Alrai, Dawn Ng, Matt Bryans and Nina Chua.
This exhibition is an excavation of overarching themes, the complexity of artistic practice, and the interweaving and colliding of the past and present. It introduces different viewpoints of scale, culture, life, and art experiences.
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Jenny Saville’s Fate 1, 2018 (from the series Ancestors) is a collage of classical figuration and modern abstraction in the depiction of a monumental human form; an acute awareness of how the body has been represented over time and across cultures.
That excavation of body/parts, art forms, histories/culture is then explored in Renee So’s ceramic works, Woman Holding Cup XVI, 2022, Mom Jeans II, 2024 and 'Woman' stoneware series and The Information Age (Technicolour), 2022 stained-glass in collaboration with Piotr Franc. The work crosses cultures and time, drawing upon early fertility idols and celebrating the female form.
Performers' bodies become vessels in Oliver Beer’s video Composition for Mouths (‘songs My Mother Taught Me) I&II, 2018. By joining their lips in a tight seal to create a single mouth cavity, childhood songs are transformed into an acoustic frequency, where the meeting point of the two voices resonate as a third voice.
Mascara Drawings, 2023 by HelenA Pritchard investigates modern materials, exploring the aesthetics of daily life.
Louise Giovanelli explores the tension between representation and materiality, figuration and abstraction and how the process of painting carries and conveys meaning. Orbiter 2021 is part of a series of detailed images originating from stills of a performer in a shimmering gold sequined dress – the torso breaking down and dissolving into particles of reflected light. The surface is delicate and luminous, with a light-emitting splendour interweaving glamour and the spectacle of pop performances and the presence of gold in religious painting, used to denote the divine.
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Álvaro Barrington’s Compass Posse (Deanna), 2021 is part of a series of square canvases made with textiles, on which he draws silhouettes against an abstract background. The series reflects the cross-pollination of many influences, including culture, fashion, music and art history. His interest in materials extends to making custom-made cement frames, which convey a brutalist aspect and impart a sense of gravity to the paintings, connecting them with the idea of an urban landscape.
The body, the embracing of non-traditional materials and techniques, and references to personal and cultural history are processes that HelenA Pritchard embraces using recycled and discarded objects. Random wood, packaging, netting, scrim in Untitled Freeform, 2024, Untitled, 2020-2024, Freeform, 2024 are discarded fragments of the everyday, with an emphasis on colour and abstract characteristics.
Leo Fitzmaurice centres on the everyday— drawing our attention to the subtleties of found and discard consumerist items that are so often commonly overlooked. He critiques mass production and the physical structures onto which information is placed, presented, or contained.
From the everyday to the industrial Nicola Ellis’s Powder Coated Documents 1-6, 2021-2022 derive from her residency at Ritherdon paint shop. Each panel coated top to bottom with the colours used in the paint shop on a single day. The bespoke panels punctuate the manufacturing line at the end of each colour run.
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Tim Stoner’s compositions often take years to coalesce, compressing layers of painting that resist a singular or immediate reading. Hacienda, 2012-2022 reveals an excavation of time, scale, the relationship between space and its activity, constant conversation between the depicted, the interior and the external implications. The visceral laying of colour making up the components of a spectral phenomenon that plays across the canvas.
Yet this, plan, 2023 by Anne Tallentire zooms into the domestic space, in particular her own living environment during the pandemic. Here lines of vinyl tape continue her investigation into materiality and the space that exists around an object. Overlapping the floorplan with cropped paragraph-sized cards taken from specific passages of text, they interrogate and reimagine the space within which we find ourselves confined.
Isabelle Young’s heightened curiosity of her unfamiliarity of Italian architecture is recorded through the lensofher camera. The mystery of classical details, modernity, industrial Italy, are fragments of time, and history, stories for the imagination to unveil.
Nnena Kalu explores space, scale and materiality. The diptych, Drawing 46, 2022, is a complex relationship to space, dictated by the length and reach of her arm and size of the paper. The repetitive drawing process is an extension of the artist’s body creating an intensity of colour and layered flowing lines.
George Shaw’s paintings Thereafter III, 2022and The Foot of our Stairs, 2022 trace back to his family home which he left over 30 years ago. The council estate where he grew up has been a constant source of inspiration in his work, exploring the impact of place through urban architecture, housing estates and nature, all which carry a sense of raw imperfect nostalgia central to Shaw’s memory. The title Coming up for air, 2017 is a book by George Orwell where Shaw takes on the protagonist to capture the spaces - ‘scraps of history’ - that remain and the shapes we leave behind.
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Pam Evelyn’s gestural paintings are expansive, abstract canvases, densely layered, richly textured meditations on nature and materiality. Cool Cast, 2020 presents a complexity of texture, a vivacious composition with a sensitivity towards landscape structures. The canvas is continuously played with, and drips and blemishes are left like scars. The application of oil paint allows for a malleability and fluidity of countless gestural iterations across the panels, imbuing the painting with a sense of urgency and preciousness - containing a raw trace of human nature in sometimes its most vulnerable state.
James Collins’ series Lithic Roots, 2024are made deliberately and slowly, often over several years. He employs additive means to excavate shapes and forms that emerge from within and beneath, as if always there. In his meticulous, densely layered paintings, gradual accretions of oil are built into mounds, furrows, and channels, becoming topographical sites of intense colour.
Tanoa Sasraku’s Sleeve Front L, 2023 (from the Terratypes series) of heavily worked sheets of blank newsprint are hand-rubbed with foraged natural pigments from as far as Cornwall, Scotland to Ghana, where they take on geological and geographical information in ochre, graphite and manganese. The sheets are then stacked, cut and stitched together and cut into her Ghanaian’s father’s garment patterned forms. They are then steeped in seawater. Shards of paper are then gesturally torn away, revealing layers that both expose and encrypt details about the materiality of the land, the body and the artist’s familial legacy.
The selected works from Alice Channer’s Soft Sediment Deformation, 2018 series are from rendered photographs of the Crackington Formation, a section of quilted granite rock which forms part of the Devon coastline in the south-west of England. The geological process behind such a rock formation is called ‘soft sediment formation’, a term Channer inverts in the work’s title. Images of the rock formation are printed on Crepe de Chine fabric, which are then laid onto a pleating mould, compressed and steamed at high temperature taking the shape of the mould. Collapsing nature and industrial forms, glitches and ruptures, shows the porousness and fragility of our world.
Emii Alrai’s votivesare handcrafted fake artefacts fashioned from clay and then painted to resemble aged bronze. This intricate work spans material investigation in relation to memory, critique of the western museological structures and the complexity of archaeological excavations. The interweaving of landscape, geology, materiality, diaspora, and migration takes us on a complex journey.
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Nigel Cooke’s expansive painting Moonlight, 2022 takes its cue from influences of a world map, synonymous with travel and adventure and the Ancient Greek Titan, condemned to carry the heavens on his shoulders for eternity, at once colossal and immaterial. Cooke reimagines the icon with a delicate, diaphanous creature, reflecting his own interrogation of the immense and microscopic systems that govern the natural world. In a classically painterly style, he works to layer his canvases from dark to light, from fine brushstrokes, to create an elegant illusory quality, an emotive abstraction, as if the paintings stretch through space. He talks of where one thing ends, and another begins.
Matt Bryans’ Tree Line, 2012 is a labour-intensive erasure of time - rubbing away details from small sheets of newsprint, working methodically, collecting, examining and repurposing materials in search of its inherent qualities, creating a new beginning. His work requires investment in time and intention, using a material that bears traces of history, an elaborate ephemeral works.
Dawn Ng has devised an emotive language of creation, destruction, trace and remembrance, an ode to process and fleeting beauty. In Waterfall VIII, 2023, Ng turns ice, an ephemeral material, into a glacial decay while evoking calming waterfalls and collapsing ice shelves. The blocks of frozen pigment are a topographical medley of pigments, watercolours and dyes, a riot of colours. Using a time lapse, she compresses hours of real time into minutes of screen time, capturing moments of being.
Nina Chua makes drawings using marker pen on paper that form an exploration of line, colour and materiality, moving from subtle modulations to bold and clashing marks with a versatility that stems from the directness of drawing. Paper is treated as an object not just a surface to work upon, often drawing on both sides to exploit its permeability, crushing or rolling it into forms and crumpling it to disrupt the flow of the lines. Maker 286, 2020 captures fleeting thoughts and ideas in abstract form, as a marker of a moment in time.
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CURATOR
Deborah Smith is a curator and collections consultant who explores different strategies for collaboration and the presentation of interdisciplinary practices. She has delivered exhibitions, large-scale commissions, interwoven with programmes of learning, engagement and interpretation. Smith was previously the Director of the Arts Council Collection, the most widely circulated national collection of modern and contemporary British art, interim Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Galleries, and associate curator at Arup, the global engineering company. She is a judge for the Museum + Heritage Awards, a Shadow Board Member of The Box, Plymouth, a University of Warwick Art Collection Committee member and on the HS2 Independent Design Panel.
www.deborahsmith.net
EXHIBITION DESIGN
KHBT are a creative studio set up by Karsten Huneck and Bernd Trümpler in London and Berlin. Huneck and Trümpler are also partners of the experimental architectural network osa_office for subversive architecture which acts as a platform for spatial research that feeds into the practice. KHBT crosses boundaries and builds unique spaces that sit between art and architecture, varying from minimal installations to the construction of buildings and urban or spatial strategies. The work includes master- plans, public realm projects, residential and commercial developments and public art installations.
KHBT has consistently created spatial works of local and international significance which are published widely as well as winning various awards such as the prestigious Young Architect of the Year Award (YAYA) 2009. Huneck and Trümpler are also actively involved in academia, they were both Associate Professors at ESA - Ecole Speciale d’Architecture, Paris, and Huneck is now a Professor of Architecture at Berlin International University of Applied Science.
www.khbt.eu
Deborah Smith
Deborah Smith is a curator and collections consultant who explores different strategies for collaboration and the presentation of interdisciplinary practices. She has delivered exhibitions, large-scale commissions, interwoven with programmes of learning, engagement and interpretation. Smith was previously the Director of the Arts Council Collection, the most widely circulated national collection of modern and contemporary British art, interim Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Galleries, and associate curator at Arup, the global engineering company. She is a judge for the Museum + Heritage Awards, a Shadow Board Member of The Box, Plymouth, a University of Warwick Art Collection Committee member and on the HS2 Independent Design Panel.
Nigel Cooke
About the artist
b. 1973, United Kingdom
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Nigel Cooke (b. 1973, Manchester, UK) is a renowned contemporary artist celebrated for his deeply atmospheric and thought-provoking paintings. Cooke's work merges figuration and abstraction, creating layered compositions that explore themes of mortality, memory, and the passage of time. His work is informed by palaeontology, neuroscience, classical mythology and zoology, which is reflected in the composition of the paintings, the intricate and large-scale canvases marked by their rich textures, dynamic brushwork, and a haunting use of color. Cooke’s paintings often feature decaying landscapes, ambiguous figures, and symbols that evoke a sense of existential inquiry and contemplation.
Cooke earned his MA in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art in London, followed by a PhD from Goldsmith's College, London. His work is held in several of the world’s major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Gallery, London; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Astrup Fearnely Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo; Milwaukee Art Museum. Recent solo exhibitions include Nigel Cooke: How the World Became Natural, Pace Gallery, New York (2023); Nigel Cooke: Atlas with Butterfly, Pace Gallery, London, (2022); and Nigel Cooke: Painter’s Beach Club, Hastings Contemporary, UK (2019). Notable group exhibitions include ENDGAME, Secci Gallery, Pietrasanta, Italy (2023); Next World: The Power of Dreams, Iwaki City Art Museum, Japan (2021); and Where is the Madness You Promised Me: Dystopian Paintings from the Marc & Livia Straus Collection, Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art, NY (2019).
Portrait of Nigel Cooke, 2022, photo by Damian Griffiths © Nigel Cooke, courtesy Pace Gallery
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Nigel CookeMoonlight, 2022
Jenny Saville
About the artist
b. 1970, United Kingdom
Jenny Saville (b. 1970, United Kingdom) is a contemporary British painter and an original member of the Young British Artists. She is renowned for her compelling, large-scale depictions of the female figure. Saville's work challenges traditional notions of beauty and confronts societal attitudes towards the body, often portraying flesh in a raw, unidealized manner. She graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1992, and her early talent caught the eye of collector Charles Saatchi, who purchased her work and included her in the pivotal 1997 exhibition "Sensation" at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Saville's paintings are characterized by their grand scale, expressive brushwork, and striking realism. She draws inspiration from diverse sources, including medical textbooks, art history, and her own body, creating works that explore themes of identity, gender, and corporeality. Her masterly and meticulous handling of oil paint conveys the weight, texture, and palpability of flesh, evoking a visceral response and inviting viewers to confront their perceptions of the human form. Her work challenges the tradition of figurative painting, pushing her figures to the extremities of anatomy and raising questions about society's and art history's perception of the body.
Saville's work is held in public collections around the world, including The Broad, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Norton Museum of Art, Florida; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Tate, London.
Recent solo exhibitions include Ekkyklema, Gagosian, London (2023); Jenny Saville, Museo Novecento, Museo degli Innocenti, Museo di Casa Buonarroti, Museo di Palazzo Vecchio and Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, Italy (2021); Jenny Savile: Elpis, Gagosian, New York (2020); and Now: Jenny Saville, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2018).
Group exhibitions include The Human Body, Hill Art Foundation, New York (2021); Busts of Women: Paris 10th Anniversary Exhibition, Gagosian, Paris (2020); Person of Interest, Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska, Lincoln (2020); The Aerodrome: An exhibition dedicated to the memory of Michael Stanley, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2019); Visions of the Self: Rembrandt and Now, Gagosian in participation with English Heritage, London (2019).
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Jenny SavilleFate I , 2018
Tim Stoner
About the artist
British, b. 1970
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Tim Stoner (b. 1970) works in Bethnal Green, East London, only a few miles from where he grew up. He has also painted in Ronda, Spain for the last 20 years.
Stoner is widely known for monumental paintings that grapple back and forth with the landscape through extensive layering and erasure, revealing dissected forms and suggestions of light beaming on broken landscapes. Often worked on for a number of years, Stoner’s paintings are not just comprehensive diaries of nature’s dynamism, but records of our imprint on the landscape. His Ronda paintings reflect the layered and disparate history of cultural and religious influences exerted on the region over centuries. Stoner studied at Norwich School of Art (1989-92), the Royal College of Art, London (1992-94), the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (1997-98), and attended the British School at Rome (2001). Tim Stoner was the winner of the 2001 ICA Futures prize. Recent group exhibitions include The Kingfisher’s Wing, GRIMM Gallery (2022, curated by Tom Morten); Slow Painting, Hayward Gallery Touring (2019-20); Telescope at Hastings Contemporary, Hastings UK (2019, curated by Nigel Cooke); and The London Open, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015). Selected collections include: The Government Art Collection (UK); The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL (US); de Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam (NL); The Saatchi Collection, London (UK); Sammlung Goetz, Munich (DE); The Deutsche Bank Art Collection, Frankfurt (DE); Simmons & Simmons, London (UK); The Sam & Shanit Schwartz Collection, Los Angeles, CA (US).
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Tim StonerTormenta, 2016-19
Tim StonerHacienda, 2012-22
Álvaro Barrington
About the artist
b. 1983, Venezuela
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Born in Venezuela in 1983, Alvaro Barrington is a contemporary artist known for his innovative approach to art that fuses personal history with broader cultural narratives. Raised in Brooklyn, NY, and Grenada, Barrington's work is deeply informed by his Caribbean roots and urban upbringing. His mixed-media creations, often incorporating textiles, paint, and found objects, reflect a rich tapestry of influences ranging from Caribbean craft traditions to the vibrant street culture of New York City.
Barrington's art is characterized by its tactile quality and vibrant use of color, exploring themes of identity, community, and memory. He frequently collaborates with other artists and incorporates references to music, literature, and popular culture, creating pieces that are both deeply personal and universally resonant. His work challenges conventional boundaries, merging fine art with everyday materials to create a dynamic visual language.
Educated at Hunter College in New York and the Slade School of Fine Art in London, Barrington's work has been shown in numerous international exhibitions, including Grace, Tate Britain, London (2024); Grandma's Land, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2023); Alvaro Barrington: SPIDER THE PIG, PIG THE SPIDER, South London Gallery, London (2021); Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London (2021); and A Taste of Chocolate, Thaddaeus Ropac, London (2018).
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
![Compass Pose [Deanna]](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/nijaqtbv/production/d81ffd0e25633d8f34df0015fb775882698e705b-1000x992.png?w=800&q=80&auto=format)
Álvaro BarringtonCompass Pose [Deanna], 2021![Compass Pose [Deanna]](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/nijaqtbv/production/d81ffd0e25633d8f34df0015fb775882698e705b-1000x992.png?w=30&q=1&auto=format)
Pam Evelyn
About the artist
b. 1996, United Kingdom
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Pam Evelyn (b. 1996, United Kingdom) is a painter living and working in London. The British artist is known for her large-scale, abstract paintings that convey a profound sense of energy and movement. Evelyn's work is characterized by its expressive brushwork, vivid color palette, and complex layering techniques. Her work is informed by nature, the body and materiality, her paintings often evoking natural landscapes and organic forms yet remaining open to interpretation, inviting viewers to engage with their own perceptions and emotions. Evelyn's creative process is deeply intuitive, allowing her to explore the boundaries between control and spontaneity. She employs a variety of media, including oil, acrylic, and charcoal, to build up textured surfaces that convey a sense of depth and vitality recalling the spirit of Abstract Expressionist painting. Her work explores themes of chaos and order, nature and abstraction, reflecting her interest in the fluid dynamics of the natural world.
Evelyn received a BFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London in 2019, and an MA in Painting from Royal College of Art, London in 2022. Recent exhibitions include ‘A Handful of Dust’, Pace Gallery, London (2023); ‘The Reason for Painting’, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, UK (2023); and ‘New British Abstraction’, Centre for International Contemporary Art, Vancouver, Canada (2023). Evelyn's work is included in the public collections of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy and Zabludowicz Collection, London, United Kingdom.
Portrait of Pam Evelyn, 2023, photo by Robert Glowacki © Pam Evelyn, courtesy Pace Gallery
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Pam EvelynCool Cast, 2020
Dawn Ng
About the artist
b. 1982, Singapore
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Dawn Ng was born in 1982 and lives and works in Singapore. Ng’s practice uses photography, light, film, collage, painting and large-scale installations to consider time, memory and the ephemeral. In her recent series Into Air she emphasises temporality and beauty through her documentation of melting blocks of pigmented ice, sculptural forms that she creates in layers in the studio. The final stage of the process results in ‘Ash’ or ‘residue’ paintings - paper is steeped in the melted pigment over several weeks and the result is a new surface, a combination of careful manipulation and chance. Encouraging slow looking, Ng’s works is characterised by lyricism and a nuanced use of colour and draws visual parallels with topographical references of landscape and geology.
Recent solo exhibitions include Kate MacGarry, London (2023); Into Air, curated by Jenn Ellis, St Cyprian’s Church, London (2022) and Monument Momento, Sullivan & Strumpf, Singapore (2020). Ng has been commissioned by the National Gallery Singapore (2023); UBS Art Collection (2023); Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore (2020); ArtScience Museum, SIngapore (2019) and the Hermès Foundation (2016). She has exhibited at the Institute of Modern Art, Australia (2024); Jeju Biennale, South Korea (2017); Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France (2015) and the Lille 3000 art festival, France (2015).
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Dawn NgIt was a White Crane it was a Helpless Thing Upon a Red Stain and an Arrow in its Wing, 2023
Dawn NgWaterfall VIII, 2023
Matt Bryans
About the artist
b. 1977, United Kingdom
Matt Bryans was born in 1977 in Croydon, England and currently lives and works in Norway. Bryans' approach to art-making is intimate and tactile - erasing small sheets of newsprint or whittling wood, working continually and methodically, collecting, examining and repurposing materials which might otherwise be forgotten or discarded. His work requires investment only of time and intention, his materials are made to reveal unforeseen properties and meaning, lifted from a decaying past and transformed with devoted effort into something precious.
Bryans has had solo shows at Kate MacGarry, London (2021); Veveriet, A?lga?rd, Norway (2020); Treignac Projet, Limousin, France (2017); Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen, Norway (2014); Chapter Gallery, Cardiff, UK; SFCamerawork San Francisco, USA (2011); Atlanta Center of Contemporary Art, Atlanta, USA (2006); MMD Museum Dhondt-Dhaenes, Deurle, Belgium (2005); Salon 94, New York, USA (2005).
Bryans’ work has been included in the group exhibitions Auto fictions – Contemporary drawing, Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, Germany (2018); Manifesta 12, Palazzo Campofranco, Palermo, Italy (2017); Contemporary Drawing Prize, Fondation d’art Contemporain Daniel et Florence Guerlain, Centre Pompidou, Galerie d’Art Graphique, Paris, France (2017); Guerlain Donation, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2013); Stray Alchemists, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2008) and Recent Acquisitions, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA (2005).
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Matt BryansTree Line, 2012
Renee So
About the artist
b. 1974, Hong Kong
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Renee So was born in Hong Kong in 1974 and grew up in Melbourne, Australia. So lives and works in London. Spanning numerous traditional craft techniques including ceramics, hand-woven textiles and furniture, So's work is centred around representations of the female figure in prehistoric cultures. She bestows monumental grandeur and caricatural qualities to the figures in her works, which weave together a pattern of cross-cultural references. These include prehistoric Europe, Africa and Meso-America as well as ancient Egypt, Assyria and China. Her fictional personas borrow from ancient ritual masks, military and aristocratic portraiture.
Solo exhibitions include The Lowry, Salford, UK (upcoming, 2024); Kate MacGarry, London (2024); Provenance, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, Australia and UNSW Galleries, Sydney, Australia (2023); Effigies and Elginisms, Cample Line, Scotland (2022); Ancient and Modern, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, UK (2019-20) and Bellarmines and Bootlegs, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK (2019).
Group exhibitions include Human Conditions of Clay, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK (2022); Chapter Gallery, Cardiff, Wales, UK (2021-22); Hapticity: A Theory of Touch and Identity, Lychee One, London, UK (2021); London Making Now, Museum of London, UK (2021) and Transparent Things, Goldsmiths CCA, London, UK (2020. A new publication, Renee So: Provenance, was published in 2023 to accompany her major survey exhibition at Monash University Museum of Art.
Photo: Caline Ng
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Renee SoDisplay, 2024
Renee SoWoman Holding Cup XVI, 2022
Renee SoMom Jeans, 2024
Oliver Beer
About the artist
b. 1985, United Kingdom
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Oliver Beer studied musical composition at the Academy of Contemporary Music before reading Fine Art at the Ruskin, University of Oxford and film theory at the Sorbonne, Paris. He makes sculptures, installations, videos, and immersive live performances that reveal the hidden properties and musicality of objects, bodies, and architectural sites. Drawing on his musical training, his social and familial relationships often become the blueprint for multi-disciplinary works that engage with intimate and universal concerns, such as the transmission of musical memories and the personal and cultural meanings invested in the things we possess. The artist’s work has been the subject of many solo and group exhibitions, notably at Met Breuer, Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA PS1, New York; Centre Pompidou, Opéra Garnier, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Palais de Tokyo, Musée d’Art Moderne and Château de Versailles, Paris; West Bund Museum, Shanghai; and the Sydney, Istanbul, Lyon and Venice biennales.
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Oliver BeerComposition for Mouths (Songs My Mother Taught Me) I and II, 2018
Renee So and Piotr Frac
About the artist
b. 1974, Hong Kong
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Renee So and Piotr FracThe Information Age (Technicolour), 2022
Nina Chua
About the artist
b. 1980, United Kingdom
Online
Nina Chua was born in Manchester, UK and studied at Manchester School of Art, completing her MA in Fine Art in 2011. She works predominantly in the field of drawing. In 2016 she was selected for the Liverpool Biennial Associate Artist Programme. In 2020 her work was selected for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize. In 2021 she held her first solo show at Workplace Foundation, Newcastle. She has exhibited at, amongst others, Nakata Museum, Hiroshima; Castlefield Gallery, Manchester; Baltic 39, Newcastle; and DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague. Her work is held in collections at The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester; Artists’ Books Collection Dundee, Library of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee; Simmons and Simmons Contemporary Art Collection; The Arts Council Collection and Soho House.
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Nina ChuaMarker 286, 2020
Leo Fitzmaurice
About the artist
b. 1963, United Kingdom
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Rather than adhering to a specific medium or form, Fitzmaurice's practice is deeply rooted in a process of roaming and observation. His focus invariably centres on the everyday—the subtleties so common they are often overlooked. Through the use of found and discarded items, Fitzmaurice confronts themes of consumerism, the repercussions of mass production, and the physical structures onto which information is placed, presented, or contained. Previous bodies of Fitzmaurice's work have explored a diverse range of materials, including discarded Coca-Cola cans, plastic shopping bags, abandoned cigarette packets, and promotional flyers—each imbued with a sense of disposability that contradicts their enduring impact on the environment. By reworking and manipulating society’s unwanted debris, his works prompt reflection on the subtle structures that hold information within the public realm, as well as their evolution over time. Evoking a continued relevance that mirrors our culture's burgeoning consumption of entertainment, Fitzmaurice's work highlights the tension between the necessity of information for choice-making as well as the overwhelming inundation of data in modern society.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Enjoy Civic Life, Humber Street Gallery, Hull, UK, 2021; Between You and Me and Everything Else, The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK, 2018; As Yet, Caustic Coastal, Manchester, UK, 2017; OH V HO, The Sunday Painter, London, UK, 2016; Frieze London Sculpture Park, 2015; /|\, The Sunday Painter, London 2014; Blank Stir, The Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, UK, 2012; You Try to Tell Me But I never Listen, New Art Gallery Walsall, 2011; Sometimes the Things You Touch Come True, Yorkshire Sculpture Park 2007; Neat Stuff , First-site Colchester 2005. Group exhibitions include Sculpture In the City, London, UK, 2019; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK, 2016; Reader, Gether Contemporary, Copenhagen, 2016; Edit/Undo, Space In Between, London, 2015; Easy Does It (Curated by Kevin Hunt), David Dale Gallery, Glasgow, 2014; Chain Chain Chain (curated by Glenn Adamson), Bischoff Weiss, London, 2012; The way we do art now, curated by Pavel Buchler, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin, 2010; Flyerssheepflagshelf, Seventeen Gallery, London, 2010. Fitzmaurice was the recipient of the 5th Northern Art Prize in 2012. Fitzmaurice’s work is in the Arts Council Collection of England, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Manchester Art Gallery, The Royal London Hospital (Vital Arts), The Locus Plus Archive, Government Art Collection, Modern Forms Collection (London) and numerous private collections.
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Leo FitzmauriceMisconstruction VII, 1999
Leo FitzmauriceMisconstruction IV, 1999
Leo FitzmauriceMisconstruction VI, 1999
Leo FitzmauriceMisconstruction VIII, 1999
Leo FitzmauriceMisconstruction X, 1999
Leo FitzmauriceMisconstruction I, 1999
Leo FitzmauriceMisconstruction IX, 1999
Leo FitzmauriceMisconstruction II, 1999
Leo FitzmauriceMisconstruction III, 1999
Leo FitzmauriceMisconstruction V, 1999
HelenA Pritchard
About the artist
b. 1975, South Africa
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b. 1975, Durban, South Africa. Lives and works in London and Shropshire
HelenA Pritchard was born in South Africa and came to London to study, firstly for a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of East London and then for an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, where she was the recipient of the Stanley Spencer Scholarship. Pritchard’s varied artistic practice encompasses painting, sculpture, and installation, centred around a concern with the ecological, and the elevation of discarded detritus and found materials through her work. This is done via a formal language, that often refers to her background as a painter. These processes connecting material and the organic relate back to the ideas of Hildergard von Bingen, the 12th century abbess, composer, theologian and medicinal herbalist, and her belief in the divine force of nature, or ‘Viriditas’, the translation from Latin meaning green and truth. Helen lives and works between London and Shropshire, the duality between city and country offering a rich and broad landscape of materials and context.
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
HelenA PritchardMascara Drawings, 2023
HelenA PritchardFreeform, 2024
HelenA PritchardUntitled, 2020-2024
HelenA PritchardUntitled Freeform, 2024
HelenA PritchardMascara Drawings, 2023
Louise Giovanelli
About the artist
b. 1993, United Kingdom
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Louise Giovanelli, born in 1993, is a British artist recognized for her meticulous and evocative paintings that explore the interplay between light, texture, and narrative. Giovanelli graduated from the Manchester School of Art in 2015 and later honed her craft at the Städelschule in Frankfurt under the tutelage of renowned artist Amy Sillman. Her work is celebrated for its delicate balance between realism and abstraction, often drawing inspiration from historical art references, cinematic stills, and architectural details.
Giovanelli’s paintings are distinguished by their luminous quality and intricate detail, capturing fleeting moments and imbuing them with a sense of timelessness. She frequently uses layered glazes and precise brushwork to create a depth that invites viewers to look closer and uncover hidden subtleties within the composition. Her themes often revolve around the tension between presence and absence, representation and materiality, visibility and obscurity, figuration and abstraction.
Solo exhibitions include Always Different, Always the Same, Moon Grove, Manchester, UK (2023); As If, Almost, White Cube, London (2022); Auto-da-fé, GRIMM, New York (2021); Louise Giovanelli, Workplace Foundation, Gateshead, UK (2019); A Throw to the Side, Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, UK (2018). Notable group exhibitions include In New York, Thinking of You, FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2023); Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London (2021); Reflections beyond the Surface, AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (2021); and P is for Portrait, The Art House, Worcester, UK (2019).
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Louise GiovanelliOrbiter, 2021
Nicola Ellis
About the artist
Lives and works in Manchester, UK
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Ellis studied BA Fine Art at UCLAN in 2009 and MA Fine Art at Manchester School of Art in 2010. Recent solo exhibitions include: No Gaps in the Line. Castlefield Gallery UK (2021) Chemistry and Magic, straight down the line commission for The National Festival of Making, Blackburn UK (2018)
Recent Group exhibitions include: Twelve Thousand: and exhibition of large scale sculpture, Manchester, UK (2024), Centre of the periphery, Pipeline Contemporary, Fitzrovia London UK, Mosaic Art Prize , hosted at Hauser & Wirth, London UK(2023), Reflections part 3: sculpture made by women, Workplace, London UK(2022), Not Painting, Copperfield Gallery, London, UK (2021) Peripheral Memories, Palazzo Costanzi, Trieste Italy, following a residency at the headquarters of Pittini, a manufacturer or steel and long products in Osoppo Italy, facilitated by Io.Deposito (2020)
Ellis was a recipient of a Henry Moore Artist Award in 2020 and was a Henry Moore Artist Research Fellow in 2022. Her work has recently been acquired by the Arts Council Collection and the Government Art Collection.
Ellis is a member of Para-lab Manchester; a group of artists and material scientists interested in cooperation and collaboration based in Greater Manchester and Yorkshire. She is also a member of Incidental Unit, the current iteration of Artist Placement Group. She also holds a permanent artist residency at Ritherdon & Co Ltd, a family owned manufacturer of steel enclosures in Darwen, Lancashire, UK
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Nicola EllisPowder coated document No 3, 2020-2021
Nicola EllisPowder coated document No 17, 2020-2021
Nicola EllisPowder coated document No 4, 2020-2021
Nicola EllisPowder coated document No 5, 2020-2021
Nicola EllisPowder coated document No 15, 2020-2021
Nicola EllisPowder coated document No 16, 2020-2021
Isabelle Young
About the artist
b. 1989, London, UK
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Isabelle Young (b. 1989, London, UK) graduated from the Royal College of Art, London with an MA in Photography (2022). Isabelle Young: Stills, her first solo exhibition in London,presented a new photographic series rooted in neorealist cinema (2023). The solo exhibition Isabelle Young: In Camera at Galerie Fabian Lang, Switzerland (2022) focused on various architectural series, and the gallery recently presented her work at Felix Art Fair, Los Angeles, USA (2023). Exhibitions include Palazzo Monti: Transatlantico, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, USA (2020); Van Gogh House, London, UK (2020); Galerie Norbert Arns, Cologne, Germany (2019). Collections include Credit Suisse Collection, Switzerland; Museo Casa Mollino, Turin, Italy; Katrin Bellinger Collection, London, UK; Simmons and Simmons, London, UK; and Palazzo Monti, Brescia, Italy.
Photo: Christian Young, 2023
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Isabelle YoungNegatives, 2022
Isabelle YoungJanuary, 2023
Isabelle YoungCovering, 2023
Isabelle YoungValverde, 2022
Isabelle YoungNaples, 2022
Isabelle YoungTerrazzo, 2021
Isabelle YoungOur Lady of the Angels, 2023
George Shaw
About the artist
b. 1966, England
George Shaw was born in Coventry, England in 1966. He studied a BA of Fine Art at Sheffield Polytechnic and later an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London. In 2001, Shaw was shortlisted for the Turner Prize for his solo exhibition ‘The Sly and Unseen Day’, a selection of works focusing on the Tile Hill housing estate, Coventry where he grew up.
As a painter, Shaw is known for his meticulous depictions of suburban landscapes. Growing up in the Tile Hill area of Coventry, Shaw draws heavily on his childhood surroundings, painting the overlooked edges of the urban environment with an extraordinary level of detail. His work is characterized by the use of Humbrol enamel paints, a medium traditionally reserved for model-making, which lends his paintings a distinctive, almost photographic quality. Shaw's subject matter includes everyday scenes—bus stops, phone boxes, graffiti, and suburban homes—capturing a gritty, yet nostalgic view of post-war Britain. His art explores themes of memory, time, and the often-unseen beauty of the mundane. Shaw's work has been widely exhibited and is part of several major collections, including Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham; British Council, National Museum of Wales, Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, Olbricht Collection, Essen, and the Tate Collection, London.
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
George ShawThereafter III, 2022
George ShawThe Foot of our Stairs, 2022
George ShawComing Up for Air, 2017
Nnena Kalu
About the artist
b. 1996, Scotland
Online
Born in Glasgow, 1966 Lives and works in London
Nnena Kalu has developed her artistic practice at ActionSpace’s studio in Studio Voltaire since 1999 and is an important member of both Studio Voltaire and ActionSpace’s artistic communities.
Her practice is rooted in two-dimensional works, sculptures and installations. Through binding, layering and wrapping materials, Nnena Kalu explores space, scale and materiality with repetitive and durational sculptural processes. Her installations often begin with multiple compact ‘cocoons' or 'boulders’ of textiles and paper tightly packed in cellophane and tape. With an emphasis on colour and volume, these spheres of bound materials are clustered together around frameworks and existing structures. Nnena’s energetic installations become an extension of her physical movements, focusing on an important relationship between the artist’s body and her sculptural forms.
Nnena’s two-dimensional works are also viewed as sculptural explorations of space dictated by the length and reach of Nnena’s arms, as well as the size of the paper. Drawings and paintings are frequently produced in pairs, the second an echo of the first, a rhythm is built up and multiple layers are constructed. As with Nnena’s sculptural works, the drawings are an exploration of continuous line, shifting and ever-evolving forms. Process, repetition and material are pivotal to Nnena’s practice. The energy and passion Nnena emits through making, her methodology and the complex and ambitious work she creates are fascinating.
Recent solo exhibitions include Nnena Kalu, Arcadia Missa (2024), Infinite Drawing, Deptford X, (2022), Studio Voltaire elsewhere (2020) and Wrapping, Humber Street Gallery (2019). Group exhibitions include TAGELDIMDE/MIDDLEGATE, Geel, Belgium (2023), Trickster Figures: Sculpture and the Body, MK Gallery (2023), To all the Kings who have no Crowns, Carl Freedman Gallery (2022). Nnena has been awarded the Paul Hamlyn Awards for Artists, the Mark Tanner Sculpture Development Grant and the LOEWE FOUNDATION/ Studio Voltaire Award. Her work is held in the public collections of the Tate and Arts Council Collection, as well as international private collections.
Nnena Kalu is a Resident Artist at ActionSpace
Nnena Kalu, Artist portrait, Kaleidoscopic Realms, 2024. Photo credit: Lamar Francois
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Nnena KaluDrawing 8, 2021
Nnena KaluDrawing 46, 2022
James Collins
About the artist
b. 1992, United Kingdom
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James Collins (b. 1992, Darlington, UK) lives and works in Darlington, UK. Collins received his MA from the Royal College of Art (2017) and his BA from Wimbledon College of Art (2015). Selected solo exhibitions include Ground, Workplace, London, UK (2024); New Paintings, Encounter in collaboration with Painters Painting Paintings, Lisbon, Portugal (2023); Penumbra, Claas Reiss, London, UK (2021); and Occulation, Car Drde, Bologna, Italy (2021). Group exhibitions include Once, Then, Gone, Newchild Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium (2023); The Reason for Painting, with The Art Riot Collective, Mead Gallery, Warwick Art Centre, UK (2023); Alte Freunde, neue Freunde, Claas Reiss, London, UK (2021); and Abstract with Figure, James Fuentes, New York, US (2020). His work is included in international private collections.
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
James CollinsLithic Root 13, 2024
James CollinsLithic Root 17, 2024
James CollinsLithic Root 15, 2024
James CollinsLithic Root 10, 2024
Anne Tallentire
About the artist
b. County Armagh, Northern Ireland
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Anne Tallentire (b. County Armagh, Northern Ireland) lives and works in London, UK. Her practice encompasses moving image, sculpture, installation, performance, and photography. Through visual and textual interrogation of everyday materials and structures, Tallentire’s work seeks to reveal systems that shape the built environment and the economics of labour. Her recent work has examined geographical dislocation and demarcation in relation to infrastructure. From 1993, Tallentire has also made work as part of the artist duo work-seth/tallentire with artist John Seth. She is also the co-organiser, with Chris Fite-Wassilak, of the peripatetic event series hmn.
Recent solo exhibitions include measurement plan, Cromwell Place, London (2023); Material Distance, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2022); But this material..., The MAC, Belfast, Ireland (2021); As happens, Hollybush Gardens, London (2020); Plan (...), Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria (2019); Shelter, commissioned by 14-18 Now, touring at Nerve Centre, Derry; Ulster Museum, Belfast; FabLab, Limerick (all 2016); This and Other Things, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2010); and Irish Pavilion, 48th Venice Biennale (1999), among others.
Group exhibitions include Vertices: Anne Tallentire and Olga Balema, Lismore Castle Arts, Co. Waterford (2024), Ireland; Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970–1990, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh and Tate Britain, London (2023–24); Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City, curated by Lubaina Himid, Lead Art Gallery, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol; Southampton City Art Gallery and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (2022–23); An Insular Rococo, Hollybush Gardens, London (2022); IMMA 30 Setting Out, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (2021); REFUGE, Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2021); Extrospection, Pi Artworks, London (2020); Truth: 24 Frames Per Second, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, USA (2017); Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980’s Britain, Tate Liverpool, UK (2014); Publish and be Damned, ICA, London (2013); and Anthology - for Lucy Reynolds, Film in Space, Camden Art Centre, London (2012), among others.
Her work is held in significant public collections, including Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Government Art Collection, UK; Arts Council Collection, UK; British Council Collection, UK; and Arts Council Ireland Collection. In 2018 Tallentire was the recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists. She is Professor Emerita at Central Saint Martins, where she taught from the early 1990s to 2014.
Photo by: Emile Holba
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Anne TallentireYet this, plan b, 2023
Anne TallentireYet this, plan g, 2023
Anne TallentireYet this, plan i, 2023
Anne TallentireYet this, plan e, 2023
Anne TallentireYet this, plan f, 2023
Alice Channer
About the artist
b. 1977, United Kingdom
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Alice Channer is an artist working with sculpture. Her forms and materials are found in the social and sensual worlds of industrial and natural processes. Over long periods of time, she immerses herself in organic and synthetic materials and production processes to find forms within them that she develops as sculpture. Her method is both experimental and precise, collaborating with people, machines, and materials to bring multiple bodies and voices into her polyphonic works.
Alice Channer lives and works in the edges of London.
In 2023 a survey exhibition featuring new commissions and an overview of sculpture and drawing from the last decade titled Heavy Metals / Silk Cut opened across Kunstmuseum and Kunsthalle Appenzell, CH. Additional solo institutional exhibitions include R o c k f a l l at Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, US, touring with Public Art Fund to City Hall Park, New York (both 2015); Pool at Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, DE (2014); Invertebrates at Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire, UK (2013); Soft Shell at Kunstverein Freiburg, DE (2013); and Out of Body at South London Gallery, UK (2012).
Commissions for sculptures in public space include Rockpool for High Desert Test Sites in the Mojave Desert, CA, USA (2022); Nanowires for the Engineering Department of the University of the West of England, UK (2021); and Lethality and Vulnerability for Artangel at Orford Ness, Suffolk, UK (2021).
Her work has been presented as part of the Liverpool Biennale, UK (2021), the 55th Venice Biennale, IT (2013) and Glasgow International, UK (2010).
She has participated in numerous international institutional group exhibitions including; Milton Keynes Gallery, UK (2023); Kunsthalle Hamburg, DE (2022/23); the Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2022); at Marta Herford, DE (2021); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2021); Tate Britain, UK; Ca’ Pesaro, Venice, IT; Towner Gallery, Eastbourne, UK and Nasher Sculpture Centre, Dallas, USA (all 2019); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2017/18); MO.CO. Montpellier, FR; Kettles Yard, Cambridge, UK; and Museum Morsbroich, DE (all 2018); Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK, Aspen Art Museum, USA and Kunsthaus Hamburg, DE (all 2017); Museum Kurhaus Kleve, DE (2016); Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, LB; Public Art Fund, New York, US and John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK (all 2015); Fridericianum, Kassel, DE (2014); Künstlerhaus Graz, AT (2014); and Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK and Tate Britain, London, UK (both 2012).
She is represented by Konrad Fischer Galerie, Berlin and Düsseldorf, DE.
Channer’s work is held in public and private collections worldwide including Tate, London, UK; Guggenheim, New York, USA; Arts Council, UK; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, LB; Frac des Pays De La Loire, FR; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, DE; Mercedes-Benz Art Collection, DE; KAI10 | Arthena Foundation, DE; Kunstmuseum Appenzell, CH; D. Daskalopoulos Collection, Athens, Greece; BY ART MATTERS, Hangzhou, China; Rachovsky Collection, Dallas, USA; UBS Art Collection, Zurich, CH; Government Art Collection, London, UK; Nottingham City Art Gallery, UK; Southampton City Art Gallery, UK.
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Alice ChannerSoft Sediment Deformation, Four Bodies (Crop Circle), 2020
Alice ChannerSoft Sediment Deformation, Four Bodies (Crackington), 2020
Alice ChannerSoft Sediment Deformation, Full Body (Cycloid Scales) R, 2018
Alice ChannerSoft Sediment Deformation, Full Body (Cycloid Scales) L, 2018
Emii Alrai
About the artist
b. 1993, United Kingdom
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Emii Alrai is an artist and trained museum registrar whose work spans material investigation in relation to memory, critique of the western museological structure and the complexity of ruins. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, her work operates as large-scale realms built in relation to bodies of research which concern archaeology and the natural environments objects are excavated from. Weaving in oral histories, inherited nostalgia and the details of language to question the rigidity of Empire and the power of hierarchy to interpolate the static presence of history. Clay vessels, gypsum forms and steel armatures punctuate the labyrinth-like spaces Alrai creates, mimicking museum dioramas and romanticised visions of the past. Past solo exhibitions include Lithics at Quench Gallery, Margate (2024); A Core of Scar, The Hepworth Wakefield & iniva (2022); and Reverse Defence at Workplace Foundation in Newcastle (2022). Alrai is currently included in the group exhibition, An Axis of Abstraction: Art in Cornwall and Yorkshire – Then and Now at Leeds Art Gallery. Previous group exhibitions include Drawing Attention: Emerging Artists in Dialogue, a British Museum touring exhibition (2023-2024); life-bestowing cadaverous soooooooooooooo at CCA Glasgow (2024); A Permanent Departure for Nostalgia, A rehearsal on legacy with Zaha Hadid at the Contemporary Arts Centre, Cincinnati (2023); and Exploratory Drawings at Maximillian William, London (2022). Alrai’s work is held in public collections including the British Museum, London; Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds; the Arts Council Collection, London; the Government Art Collection, and The Hepworth Wakefield.
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Emii AlraiHollowed Belly Votive, 2023
Emii AlraiScone with Pounding Votive, 2023
Emii AlraiScone with Three Spear Bull Votive, 2023
Emii AlraiOne Leg Votive, 2023
Sholto Blissett
About the artist
b. 1996, United Kingdom
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Sholto Blissett, born in 1996, lives and works in London. He received an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in London and a BA in Geography from Durham University in Durham, England.
Blissett is known for his evocative landscapes that blend the real and the surreal, his paintings characterized by their meticulous detail and imaginative compositions. His work often explores themes of nature, isolation, and the sublime, drawing viewers into fantastical worlds that challenge perceptions of reality. Blissett’s landscapes are inspired by a deep appreciation for the natural world, yet they transcend mere representation, incorporating elements of fantasy and dreamlike abstraction. His innovative use of color and light creates a sense of otherworldliness, inviting contemplation and introspection.
Exhibiting in prominent galleries such as London's Hannah Barry Gallery, Blissett has quickly gained recognition for his unique artistic vision. Solo exhibitions include: ‘Rubicon,’ Alexander Berggruen, New York (2023); and ‘Ship of Fools,’ Hannah Barry Gallery, London (2022). Selected group exhibitions include: ‘Colnaghi New Masters – Sholto Blissett x Hubert Robert,’ Colnaghi, London (2022); ‘Manscaping,’ The Hole, New York (2022); ‘The Natural World: Part II,’ Alexander Berggruen, New York (2022); ‘Utopia,’ Peres Projects, Berlin (2021).
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Sholto BlissettShip of Fools V, 2022
Tanoa Sasraku
About the artist
b. 1995, United Kingdom
Tanoa Sasraku's practice shifts between sculpture, drawing and filmmaking. Her stitched and torn newsprint works frequently harness earth pigments and garment making processes to express ideas relating to the British landscape, the human body and the artist’s familial legacy. In her practice as a filmmaker, Sasraku engages in retellings of traditional folklore via the medium of analogue film.
Tanoa Sasraku (b. 1995, Plymouth, UK) graduated from Goldsmiths College (2018). Recent solo exhibitions include Man Engine, Vardaxoglou, London (2023); Tanoa Sasraku, Vardaxoglou, London (2022); Spike Island, Bristol (2022) and PEER staged Sasraku’s first London solo institutional exhibition, 17 February – 20 May 2023.
Recent group exhibitions include Unbuild: a site of possibility, Drawing Room, London (2023); The Laboratory of the Future, Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice (2023) cur. Lesley Lokko; Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange, Newlyn (2023); Radical Landscapes, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool; tr. Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry (2022); Testament, CCA Goldsmiths, London, UK (2022); A Tower to Say Goodbye, General Release, Chelsea Sorting Office (2021); Recession Grimace, Klosterruine, Berlin, (2020); Tanoa Sasraku: O’Pierrot, LUX Moving Image, London (2020); Resist: be modern (again), John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK (2019); Nashashibi/Skaer – Thinking through other artists, Tate St Ives, UK (2019). Sasraku’s moving image works have been screened at the BFI Southbank, as part of the 18th London Short Film Festival (2021); Selected X, VideoClub online and touring (2020); Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, Berwick-upon-Tweed (2019). In 2021, Sasraku was awarded the Arts Foundation Futures Award for Visual Arts.
Tanoa Sasraku’s work is held in a number of collections, including Arts Council Collection and The Government Art Collection.
Works presented in Excavation: Macro to the Micro...
Tanoa SasrakuSleeve Front L, 2023
© Alvaro Barrington. Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London · Paris · Salzburg · Seoul. Photo: Charles Duprat.
Edition 3 of 5 + 1 AP
Signed and dated
Each: 177 x 136 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and ActionSpace.
Photo credit, Francis Ware.
Each: 158 x 136 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and ActionSpace.
Photo credit, Francis Ware
Courtesy of the artist
Edition of 5 (#3/5)
Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP
Signed and dated
Courtesy of the Artist and Workplace.
Photo by Rita Silva
Courtesy of the Artist and Workplace.
Photo by Rita Silva
Courtesy of the Artist and Workplace.
Photo by Rita Silva
Courtesy of the Artist and Workplace.
Photo by Rita Silva
© Nigel Cooke, courtesy Pace Gallery
(Framed: 126.3 x 239.2 x 7 cm)
Edition 2 of 5 + 1 AP
Signed and dated
Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP
Signed and dated
Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP
Signed and dated
Each work documents the colours used in an industrial powder coating facility in the course of a day, therefore each work is original with no edition. 24 works in the series currently exist and the number of works in the series will slowly increase in coming years.
Each work documents the colours used in an industrial powder coating facility in the course of a day, therefore each work is original with no edition. 24 works in the series currently exist and the number of works in the series will slowly increase in coming years.
Each work documents the colours used in an industrial powder coating facility in the course of a day, therefore each work is original with no edition. 24 works in the series currently exist and the number of works in the series will slowly increase in coming years.
Each work documents the colours used in an industrial powder coating facility in the course of a day, therefore each work is original with no edition. 24 works in the series currently exist and the number of works in the series will slowly increase in coming years.
Each work documents the colours used in an industrial powder coating facility in the course of a day, therefore each work is original with no edition. 24 works in the series currently exist and the number of works in the series will slowly increase in coming years.
Each work documents the colours used in an industrial powder coating facility in the course of a day, therefore each work is original with no edition. 24 works in the series currently exist and the number of works in the series will slowly increase in coming years.
© Sholto Blissett. Courtesy the Artist and Hannah Barry Gallery.
Unique.
Image credit: Photography Lucy Dawkins. Courtesy of the artist.
Unique.
Image credit: Photography Lucy Dawkins. Courtesy of the artist
Unique.
Image credit: Photography Lucy Dawkins. Courtesy of the artist.
148 cm x 107 cm each panel (framed)
Unique.
Image credit: Photography Lucy Dawkins. Courtesy of the artist
148 cm x 107 cm each panel (framed)
Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP
Signed and dated
Courtesy of the artist
Edition 1 of 5 + 1 AP
Signed and dated
Edition of 5 (#2/5)
figure: 80 x 32 x 36 cm
cup: 7 x 9.5 x 10 cm
Courtesy the artist, Cob Gallery, London and Hollybush Gardens, London. Photo: Ben Westoby
Courtesy the artist, Cob Gallery, London and Hollybush Gardens, London. Photo: Ben Westoby
Courtesy the artist, Cob Gallery, London and Hollybush Gardens, London. Photo: Ben Westoby
Courtesy the artist, Cob Gallery, London and Hollybush Gardens, London. Photo: Ben Westoby
Courtesy the artist, Cob Gallery, London and Hollybush Gardens, London. Photo: Ben Westoby