ART CITIES:London-Summer Breeze
“Summer Breeze” is a group exhibition that presents ethereal artworks by a selection of Frith Street Gallery artists. Whether by exploring complex notions of identity by foregrounding the multifaceted nature of the self, delving into the realms of domestic or natural worlds, or returning to the archive, these works remind us of the physically and temporally precarious nature of all things.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Frith Street Gallery Archive
The group exhibition “Summer Breeze” spans both Frith Street Gallery locations in London, this ensemble of photography, drawing, painting, moving image and sculpture allows viewers to drift into unfolding discovery. The works at Golden Square reveal how the notion of body is imbued with multiple meanings, including recurring bodies of artwork, or bodies of human subjects themselves. These nuanced approaches to making work across a range of media places the viewer in an active position, and testifies to the diverse methods taken on and transmuted by artists. For his sculptures Daniel Silver moulds together references from ancient civilizations across history, sculpting from an archaeological and psychological perspective a contemporary dialect that continuously looks to the past to understand the future. The result is a sort of historical chimera—an exercise in cultural cannibalism that simultaneously quotes and questions historical and contemporary museum practices. In his challenging of cultural precedence, the value given to objects produced by ancient civilizations and how these values affect our understanding of the present, the viewer is confronted with works that allude to the artist’s own history and heritage as a mix of cultures while engaging the universal. Hanging from the ceiling at Golden Square is Fiona Banner’s “Black Blind” (1999), implicating the body through its sheer scale as well as the process of mark-making with graphite on paper. Cascading from above, this work transforms the act of drawing into an immersive, all-encompassing gesture. Conversely, Dayanita Singh questions the nature of representation itself with the still moving image “Mona and Myself” (2013). Hovering in a space between video and still photography, the unfixed nature of this work mirrors the uniqueness of its non-binary subject, Mona Ahmed. At Soho Square space, narrative dissolves into the threshold of memory with a selection that reveals as much as it conceals. Shot on a mountain in Secciano, Italy, “Mountain Wind” (2002) by Jaki Irvine portrays wind moving through trees, causing the mountain to appear to breathe. Anna Barriball and Tacita Dean use source materials to reimagine the past in an ever-unfolding present. In Dean’s sound work “Trying to Find the Spiral Jetty” (1998), the artist is on a search for Robert Smithson’s earthwork, but the blending of fact and fiction ensures that the work, as well as the journey itself, is steeped in myth. As the artist says “This sound work documents my journey to try and find Robert Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty’ following faxed directions I received from Utah Arts Council. I went with someone who had no idea what he was looking for. I never intended making a work from this trip but it was a combination of the extraordinary quality of Rozel Point and the Great Salt Lake, and the fact that I can never be sure that I found the risen or submerged jetty that inspired me to partially construct the documentation of this journey”. For Barriball, found 35mm slides are photographed and re-projected as burnt out artefacts, becoming objects that are at once tangible and fleeting.
Info: Frith Street Gallery, 17–18 Golden Square, London & Soho Square, 60 Frith Street, London, Duration: 6/7-11/8/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00, www.frithstreetgallery.com