Jo Coupe Posy, 2017, cutout and rearranged botanical prints from Wayside and Woodland Blossoms (vol 2) by Edward Step, 1933, archival tape, dissection pins, 64 x 42 x 3 cm, 25 1/4 x 16 1/2 x 1 1/8 in (JCP0103) Courtesy the artist and WORKPLACE, UK
Saturday 1st July - 10am - 6pm Sunday 2nd July - 11am - 5pm
Jo Coupe - Artists talk: Saturday 1st July 11.30 am
Jo Coupe will be giving a talk and tour of her exhibition All That Fall all welcome RSVP atrsvp@workplacegallery.co.uk
Jo Coupe All That Fall / Joseph Beuys'Wirtschaftswert' 2017, WORKPLACE London, Courtesy the artist and WORKPLACE, UK
Jo Coupe
All That Fall
and Joseph Beuys'Wirtschaftswert'
19 May – 8 July 2017
WORKPLACE LONDON
61 Conduit Street, Mayfair
London, W1S 2GB
Thursdays to Saturdays, 10 – 6pm
WORKPLACE is pleased to announce All That Fall, the first solo exhibition of Jo Coupe at Workplace London. Bringing together Jo Coupe’s diverse sculptural practice in a wide variety of materials and media, All That Fall explores Coupe’s ongoing interest in the relationship between science and magic.
Informed by investigations into the Natural Sciences, religion, and ritualistic belief systems such as Louisiana Voodoo, Coupe’s interest in the paranormal has led to periods of research into diverse environments ranging from the industrial to the historical and the domestic. As such, her work shifts towards an analysis of objects and materials, and of the physical, cultural and metaphorical forces at play that pervade the meanings we commonly ascribe to them. Her work takes on a political significance by conflating opposing positions of hard science with folk ritual and the stereotypically gendered environments of heavy industry and the home. Utilising the homespun experimental methodologies of the amateur scientist to recreate supernatural manifestations and transient natural phenomena, Coupe employs her holistic knowledge of the natural world to create sculpture that finds both poetic resonance and a precarious instability in its material form or method of becoming.
Showing alongside Jo Coupe will be a selection of unique works from Joseph Beuys 'Wirtschaftswert' (Economic Values)series.
Jo Coupe Solid Air, 2017, Stepladders, Coloured Nylon String, Magnetic Field, Rare Earth Magnets, Dimensions Variable
Solid Air is a large-scale installation made from ladders, string and magnets. Activating the space between the gallery wall and ordinary domestic objects, Coupe engages our childlike fascination with magnetism. Anchored to a configuration of stepladders, metal discs tied to the opposite end of the string are pulled magically toward the wall of the gallery, causing them to float weightlessly in attraction. The architectural qualities of the stepladders are enhanced by the linear qualities of the taut string, which combine to map a complex and colourfully trembling matrix between a powerfully charged field beyond the wall, and the commonplace and functional resting on the floor.
Jo Coupe Bleed Now, 2012, Botanical prints, archival tape, dissection pins, 53 x 68 x 4 cm, Courtesy of the artist and WORKPLACE, UK
Four tiny bronze sculptures - a shrew, a baby blackbird, a wren and a rat's head - lie dead on slabs of engineering steel, low on the gallery floor. Their blunt presence countered by the delicate intricacies of their surface. Anatomical details such as hair, ribs and even veins under the skin are visible, pulling the viewer down into their Lilliputian world. This on-going series of found dead animals have been collected and stored by Coupe in their family freezer amongst the ice cream and other plats-de-demain. Cast at home using jewellery-casting techniques Coupe creates miniature monuments that tease our fascination with death through repulsion and curiosity.
Jo Coupe Slab (Blackbird), 2017, Bronze engineering steel, 6 x 10 x 10 cm (JCP0098)
Jo Coupe was born in 1975 in Stoke, UK. She studied Fine Art at Newcastle University and at Goldsmiths College, London. Previous exhibitions include: In and Out of Sight, UH Gallery, Hertfordshire; Easy does it Supercollider, Blackpool; Pertaining to Things Natural... Chelsea Physic Garden, London; An Archaeology 176, London; Fade Away And Radiate, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth; Tatton Park Biennial, Give and Take at Firstsite, Colchester, You Shall Know Our Velocity at BALTIC, Gateshead. She lives and works in Gateshead, UK.
Jo Coupe Rarefied (Phalaenopsis lobii), 2008, 18ct gold, 3 x 12 x 9 cm, Courtesy the artist and WORKPLACE, UK
To view works on WORKPLACE website please click here
Robert McNally Blackeye Fridays 2016, Graphite on paper, 55cm x 92cm, Courtesy of David Risley Gallery Copenhagen.
Robert McNally
Auf Wiedersehen
Preview: Friday 16th June, 6pm - 8pm
WORKPLACE GATESHEAD
The Old Post Office
19-21 West Street
Gateshead, NE8 1AD
http://www.workplacegallery.co.uk
Exhibition continues: 17th June - 29th July
Opening hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 5pm
Workplace Gateshead is delighted to present Auf Wiedersehen, a solo exhibition of new and existing work by Robert McNally. It is McNally's first exhibition in his hometown of Gateshead and first UK solo exhibition outside of London.
McNally creates complex drawings from memory, mediating thought and emotions into a world far from the language of words. His layered drawings simultaneously echo the density found in the paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and the absurd, chaotic and confrontational narratives in the videos and installations of Paul McCarthy.
Drawn from mass-media and news coverage McNally employs satire, parable, and allegory to comment upon the strangeness of contemporary culture. Threads of stories unravel and combine into fluent, linear, pictorial fictions - Truth and its construction is at the heart of McNally’s work alongside hypocrisy, anachronism, ambivalence, and the fine line between faith and understanding. McNally's technique employs similar ruses, tricking the eye, and confounding the viewer.
Art has similarities to the mechanics of mysticism, the currency and value being largely subjective, the effect questionable and the interpretation often so utterly broad as to render it almost meaningless. But I am able to live by art's honesty that it is man made and that I don't need a medium to explain it to me.
For his exhibition at Workplace Gateshead, McNally brings together works that examine the extremities of our culture. From the perspective of an 'ex-pat' Geordie artist currently living and working in cosmopolitan Berlin, McNally particularly and directly confronts the absurdity of Britishness.
Blackeye Fridays 2016 depicts the carnage of the most popular night in the year for office and factory Christmas parties, which consequently makes it one of the busiest nights in the year for ambulances and the police in the UK. A wild scene of bulging muscles, flailing clenched fists, spilt drinks, and flying high heeled shoes is played out to a carnivalesque backdrop of revelers and vacant drunken faces.
Another work shows an apparently medieval scene of drink and debauchery, titled Inselaffen (alternative ending to the Bayeux tapestry No.1) 2017. The word Inselaffen translates as 'Island monkeys' or 'island oafs' and refers to the German (and other European countries) stereotypical image of the English as heavy drinking, violent, criminalistic and yobbish. Characteristics of the English regularly witnessed by Europeans when visiting the UK, whilst on holiday elsewhere, or at football matches. German people offer this behavior as evidence to a tongue in cheek theory that evolution stalled on the island of Great Britain. However on closer inspection this work takes a far more serious and critical position, as we see the body of murdered Labour Party politician Jo Cox lying seemingly unnoticed as the masses complain about people 'coming over here, stealing our jobs'.
Robert McNally Inselaffen (alternative ending to the Bayeux tapestry No.1) 2017, Photogravure on Hahnemühle paper, 56cm x 63cm (framed), Edition 1 of 12 produced by Niels Borch Jensen Copenhagen, Courtesy of David Risley Gallery Copenhagen.
Robert McNally was born in 1982 in Gateshead, UK, he received his BA in Drawing from Camberwell College of Art (2002-2005). He lives and works in Berlin, Germany
McNally has works in the collections of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (NL), Damien Hirst’s Murderme collection (UK), Ekard Collection (NL), West Collection (USA), Sovereign Art Foundation (HK), Jake Chapman (UK), Dinos Chapman (UK), Olbricht Collection (DE).
Selected solo shows include Artist of the Day, Flowers Gallery, London, UK (2015); Shyster, Chisler & Quack, David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen, DK (2015); One in the Other, London, UK (2011)
Selected group exhibitions include In the Pines – Slight Return, David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen, DK (2017), Washington 186, Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels, BE (2017), Prememories, Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels, BE (2016); Small is beautiful, Flowers Gallery, London, UK (2015); Between the Lines, All Visual Arts, London, UK (2013); Wonderful-Die Olbricht Collection, Me Collectors Room, Berlin, DE (2012); Extravagent, Shameless, Unlimited, Museum Boijmas van Beuningen, Rotterdam, NL (2012); Dessins Contemporains Surréalistes de Rotterdam, Institut Néerlandais, Paris, FR (2012); Return, The House of the Nobleman, London, UK (2011)
Workplace Gallery is a contemporary art gallery run by artists.
Based in Gateshead UK, Workplace Gallery represents a portfolio of emerging and established artists through the gallery programme, curatorial projects and international art fairs.