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Urchin Eater
Private View 6 – 8.30pm, 11 November 2008
10 – 16 November 2008
22 – 23 November 2008
Yinka Shonibare’s New Space, Sunbury House, 1 Andrews Street, London E8 4QL
“Why should I copy this out… this sea urchin, why should I try to imitate nature, I might just as well try to trace a perfect circle. What I have to do is utilize as best I can the ideas which objects suggest to me, illuminate them somewhat.” - Pablo Picasso
Urchin Eater consists of the work of six artists who though formally disparate all eschew formal representation, seeking instead to invoke the true make-up of experienced, and consumed, reality.
The post-abstract, post-minimal aesthetic of Dan Coopey, Magali Reus and David Stearn’s individual practice sees incoming sensory forms stripped down to their base visual coding. Coopey goes on to rebuild a ‘truer’ form of representation, attempting to overcome the incumbent framing that all attempts at representation are dictated within. Reus disables any practicality of use within familiar objects, taken from the mundanity of work and leisure environment, asking instead that the viewer consider the role of the form psychologically within a given space. Stearn’s sculpture juxtaposes its fragility with a weightiness and foreboding that questions the viewer’s automatic visual triggers, be they colour or shape, which
define how one reads one’s own senses.
The work of Peter Fillingham, Maria Georgoula and Ian Whitfield incorporates the extensive use of the archivist and curatorial disciplines. Yet whilst these two professions have an aim of clear presentation at their heart, the artists have no such interest. Instead they use the disciplines to coerce the objects to a greater, conceptual, purpose.
Fillingham’s installation combines four works by the artist that are still in progress. Each work carries personal recollections, and questions how one digests objects and invests into them personal narratives. Put together the artist is creating a library of personal memories.
Georgoula creates sculptural collages of found or bought objects, objects copied from found objects and
information garnered from the Internet. Again, when collated together, they form fantastical narratives that go far beyond the objects themselves.
Whitfield’s paintings start with drawn, painted or photographic source images, taken from a substantial personal archive, and move through a sequence of intuitive
painterly decisions that have little to do with description or perception. Each piece evidences an enclosed and progressive investigation, the surface taking on the poetics of the textual list.
In coming together, the five artists take the recognizable sensory form and by collectively transforming,
hybridizing, recognizing and subverting the viewer’s consumption of it create something real, but never
seen.
Ian Whitfield studied at Goldsmiths College and the Royal College of Art. He has had a solo show at
Gallery No.1, Repton and been included in the Royal Academy Summer Show 2007 and the BP Portrait
Award at the National Portrait Gallery and Gire and Gimble at the Blyth Gallery, London. He currently
holds an Artist Teaching Residency at Repton School. www.iwhitfield.co.uk
David Stearn studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art. His work was selected for New Contemporaries
2008 at the A Foundation, Liverpool.
Magali Reus was born in The Hague, The Netherlands in 1981 and currently lives and works in London.
Her solo exhibitions include Playstation: A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun, Galerie Fons Welters,
Amsterdam and the angle between two walls (with Brock Enright) at MOT International, London. Selected
group exhibitions include ARTFutures 2008, Bloomberg Space, London, Sun Shine Shine, Nieuwe Vide,
Haarlem; Modern Solitude, Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam. www.magalireus.com
Maria Georgoula studied at Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Fine Art. Selected group
exhibitions include; Illumination, Service Point Building, Manchester; Calypso, Videotheque, Sala
Rekalde, Bilbao; Taenu, Tactile Bosch, Cardiff; The Works of Others, Whitechapel Library, London and
Festival for Lies, Fournos - Centre for Digital Culture, Athens. In 2006 Georgoula set up the Nauru
Project, an ongoing artist collaboration based around found information on the South Pacific island of
Nauru, the world's smallest island nation; www.nauruproject.blogspot.com.
Peter Fillingham is a currently Pathway Leader 3d at Central St Martin’s College of Art, London. His
recent exhibition at Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam featured My favourite year, the best work I ever
made (2008), the work on display here. Fillingham has previously shown at Sadlers World, London; and
Rachmaninoffs, London. He has collaborated with Charlotte Moth at David Risley gallery, London and
Traders Pop, Maastricht; and Tacita Dean and Roland Groenenboom on an exhibition at Galeria
Cadaqués Dos, Cadaques. He featured in ‘13’, curated by Rupert Norfolk and Henry Colman, at the
International Project Space, Birmingham and, in 2005, held a sculpture residency at Stour Valley Arts,
Kings Wood.
Dan Coopey studied at Goldsmiths College. He has exhibited in various group exhibitions, including
Anywhere Out of the World, Saab Platform Space, London and a year-long installation at Aylesbury
House, London. He is the winner of the Hamad Butt Fine Art Award and the BT Digital Media Award.
Urchin Eater is his curation project.
Text by Oliver Basciano
With special thanks to Yinka Shonibare.
For further information please contact Dan Coopey via dancoopey@hotmail.com
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