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PRIVATE VIEW: 15th March 6-9pm
In the end, there was nothing at the bottom of the mine shaft. No revelation, no cigar.
There’s a lot to be said for looking for something and not finding it, for expecting a thing to be more than itself. The theme of that burgeoning hope being axed by the frankness of materiality is present throughout the works in the exhibition. ‘Artifice, (Ripped)’ brings together four artists to investigate how we remember through artefacts and texts. There are two stories that guide the narrative of the exhibition - one taking place thousands of miles above sea level, the other hundreds of meters below the earth’s surface. Tarzan KingoftheJungle writes about his experiences in the mines, whilst Won-Joon Choi narrates his experience getting lost in the Alps. Neither story sticks too tightly to the truth, taking liberties in the style of Chinese whispers, warping and unfixed. Tom Hardwick-Allan sculpts crows which act as a medium between the two, portents of death for situations that could easily have gone awry, but didn’t. Made out of plastic bags, the crows hint at the same desire to see something in the mundane that isn’t really there. Panos Profitis has sculpted the goats Choi claims he met on the mountain in his story, only Profitis hadn’t read Won’s story before making the pieces. The curator has brought them together because they can act as a visual aid, a false artefact, hailing from Greece - not the Alps. This is fitting for an exhibition about the tendency to apply a false paradigm onto experience, to project onto it more than it is, or can be.
Text by Maria Drago.
PV: 15th March 6-9pm
Open 15th-22nd, closed on the weekend