BE LIKE WATER
DARREN BANKS
ANNA BETBEZE
MICHAŁ BUDNY
JOE CLARK
RICHARD RIGG
KERRY TRIBE
Preview 17th May 2013, 6 - 8pm
18th May - 22nd June 2013
Thurs - Sat, 11am - 5pm
(or by appointment)
Workplace presents be like water, a group exhibition looking at aspects of destruction as artistic formula, the erroneous or delusive nature of a fading memory, and discourses surrounding the invented and imagined. be like water takes the work of six artists that employ repetition, attrition, sublimation and intersubjectivity in the creation of their work, together formulating a dynamic epistemology relating to the intangibility of memories.
DARREN BANKS' looping video, Aural Fascination, is a clip taken from the 1974 Italian horror film, 'The Antichrist' and sees the psychologist, Dr. Marcello Sinibaldi interviewing 'Ippolita', a paralyzed young woman suffering from serious psychological issues stemming from the death of her mother. The clip plays over a section of Ennio Morricone and Edda Dell'Orso's, 'Ma Non Troppo Erotico' (1971) a seductive, soothing but erotically charged piece of music which holds Sinibaldi in seemingly fragile flux which could at any point spin off into a spiraling hedonism.
ANNA BETBEZE creates rich colour saturated works from Greek Flokati rugs. Acids, dyes and resins, accumulate, dissolve and destroy the fabric. Bunsen burners, ash and blades act to further obliterate the rugs, creating simultaneously playful and brutal works that push beyond the limitations of their materiality referencing 20th Century abstract painting, iconic interior furnishing, and metaphors for annihilation and decline.
MICHAŁ BUDNY's works are a poetic interpretation of often delusive phenomena, such as voice, memory or light. His works are an overlaying of fragile, frequently temporal materials, which act to undermine any sense of stability or form often associated with painting and sculpture. With their insubstantial and ethereal presence, they confuse the reading of volume and form.
RICHARD RIGG presents Over and done, a customised infinitely looping cassette tape with an isolated section of a piece of music titled 'Kész az egész', by Hungarian composer, Mihály Vig. The music's lyrics relate to a sense of complete loss and finality. Rigg recorded the piece of music directly onto tape from an online internet archive. Pairing the almost obsolete technology of the cassette and the affiliated tape player, with the now freely accessible sources of media present on the internet, Rigg presents the audience with a kind of corrupted memory trapped in an endless cycle of nostalgia.
JOE CLARK's photographic images of sunsets reflected in mirrors capture the uncertain passage of time and moment. There is a fleeting or elusive resonance with the present, tempered by the ever changing and inescapable passing of time. Within three images, Clark alludes to the often imprecise perception of past and present, and the poetic crystallization of the irretrievable.
KERRY TRIBE presents Here & Elsewhere, a documentary style film surrounding an interview between Peter Wollen (film critic and theoretician) and his ten year old daughter, Audrey. Posed with questions derived from Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville's 1978 television documentary, France/tour/détour/deux/enfants, Audrey wrestles with an incomprehensible conundrum, one of explaining phenomena such as light, image, time, space, memory and existence. Throughout the course of the interview the young girl's answers seem to unravel into spirals of contradiction. Tribe uses the filmic format to further question the medium's authenticity in relation to the represented and the real, drawing parallels with the human condition.
Darren Banks, Born 1978 in Orsett, Essex, UK, Lives and works in London. Recent Exhibitions include Magnum Opus, N/V_Projects, London; Deep Space, Francois Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles; File Transfer Protocol, Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; The Days of This Society are Numbered, Abrons Arts Center, New York; Defective Science, Sala Dogana, Palazzo Ducale, Genova, Italy; No Soul For Sale, Tate Modern, London, UK
Anna Betbeze, Born 1980 in Mobile, Al, USA, Lives and works in New York, Teaches painting at Yale University School of Art. Recent exhibitions include First Among Equals, Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art; Painting Expanded, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, NY; Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris; EXPO 1: New York at MOMA PS1 NY.
Michał Budny, Born 1976 in Leszno, Poland, Lives and works in Warsaw. Recent exhibitions include Author, South London Gallery, UK; Big Country, National Gallery of Art Vilnuis, LT; Painting Without Paint, David Risley Gallery Copenhagen, DK; Warsaw Under Construction, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, PL
Joe Clark, Born 1982 RAF Wegberg, B.A.O.R, Lives and works in Cologne and London. Recent exhibitions include: Screentest (For a Hero Shot), Workplace Gallery, Gateshead, UK; Higher Atlas, Marrakech Biennale 4, Marrakech, Morocco; New Contemporaries, A Foundation: Liverpool Biennial and ICA London, UK;
Richard Rigg, Born 1980 in Penrith, Cumbria, UK, Lives and works in Newcastle. Recent exhibitions include: The Inhabitant of the Watchtower, High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Tree, California, USA; Lacuna, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK; Holography, Workplace Gallery, Gateshead, UK; Quiet Works, Temple Contemporary, Philadelphia, USA; Broken Fall (organic), Galleria Enrico Astuni, Bologna, Italy
Kerry Tribe, Born 1973 in Boston, Ma, USA, Lives and works in Los Angeles. Exhibitions and performances include Critical Mass, performance at TATE London, UK; Dead Star Light, Camden Arts Centre, Modern Art Oxford, UK; 2010 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Cinema Effect: Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Park, Washington DC
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