SUMMER MARATHON 2019
Participating Artists: Florence Hutchings | Jordy Kerwick | Jan Sebastian Koch Rosanna LeFeuvre | Joy Miessi | Christian Newby | Roman Schramm
Our first-ever Summer Marathon takes a revitalised approach to the traditional ‘group show’ format, presenting 7 international artists in back-to-back solo exhibitions (in lieu of one group show) during the summer period. Through this unconventional approach, each of the exhibiting artists is able to fulfil their vision and stage a complete solo exhibition for a one-week period. The shows will come up-and-down with quick turnaround and the following week the successive artist will mount his/her solo exhibition. The experiment is intended to present a cheeky, alternative take on the group show with a blink and you’ll miss it sensibility that reflects the laissez faire mentality of summer itself.
Summer Marathon begins with sculptor and textile artist Christian Newby; followed by painter Jan Sebastian Koch; conceptual photographer Roman Schramm; textile artist and painter Joy Miessi; fineart and fashion photographer Rosanna Lefeuvre; and finally painters Florence Hutchings, and lastly Jordy Kerwick.
*Note: Gallery hours are Wednesday - Sunday (only) during this period with casual receptions every Saturday afternoon from 2-4pm.
Christian Newby:
Brick-Wall-Spider-Web-Post-It-Note (3 – 7 July)
Christian Newby is currently focusing his work around experimental textile production, exploring how markmaking and industrial carpettufting can together further expand how labour, authorship and materiality aid in defining notions of the fine and applied arts. He explores how industrial textiles is a structurally unique model for how we materially encounter a variety of broader cultural and economic intersections.
CHRISTIAN NEWBY [b. 1979, Virginia Beach, USA] graduated with an MFA from Glasgow School of Art (2009). Selected exhibitions include: Yo Compro Calidad, Matadero, Madrid (2017); Tetracontameron, Space Between, London (2016) and; Le Club des Sous l’Eau, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016). Is currently a PhD researcher at the Centre for Useless Splendour, Kingston University. Newby lives and works in London.
Jan Sebastian Koch:
Shelter from the Storm (10 – 14 July)
It seems Jan Sebastian Koch is presently the artworld’s best kept secret. His ethereal, dreamlike landscape and still life paintings evoke the otherworldliness of Chagall or Matisse, handled with a masterful approach to contemporary painting. The works are at once poetic, powerful, and deceptively simple with cerulean hues and planar shapes reminiscent of his contemporary peers Andreas Eriksson or Harold Ancart, but a sensitivity that suggests an emotional understanding or even sense of narrative. The marathon presents Jan Sebastian in his first major solo outing, and we look forward to what our future holds with this talented young artist.
Jan Koch (b.1978 Monchengladbach) graduated with an MA from the University of Art in Berlin in 2005. Solo exhibitions include: New Paintings, Avlskarl Gallery, Copenhagen (2013). Group exhibitions include: Roter Hirsch, codexberlin, Berlin (2018); Black Box, Kunsthalle, Luneburg (2018) and; No More Heroes Anymore, Kreuzberg Pavillion, Berlin (2016). Koch currently lives and works in Berlin.
Roman Schramm:
Große Soße (17 – 21 July)
German artist Roman Schramm combines photography, sculpture, and even 3D-renderings to (re)imagine the particular, often overlooked visual spaces that occur in every day (and undisclosed) spaces, directing our attention to the structure and form of his chosen subject matter. Through a re-evaluation of the quotidian, Schramm is interested in the particular dynamism that can be found through staging and perception, like an author pulling sentences into disquieting contexts. His images are created through a process of observations and interactions that are thereafter mounted through various installations within an exhibition space, where special attention is given to presentation in order to draw the viewer’s awareness to the spatial attribute of his chosen imagery.
ROMAN SCHRAMM [b. 1979 Germany] graduated from the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. Exhibitions include: Lilia & Tulipan, Kusthalle Lingen, Germany (2018); Kunsthaus Jesteburg (solo, 2016); Barlach Halle K, Hamburg (solo, 2016); Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, Berlin (2016); Never Leave Me, On Stellar Rays, New York (2016), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015); and; The Human Apparatus, Klemms, Berlin (2015). Schramm lives and works in Berlin.
Joy Miessi:
Blue Glass Fortunes (24 – 28 July)
Joy Miessi translates moments, conversations, feelings and intimate thoughts into reflective artworks that express their perspective as a non-binary emerging artist. Inspired by shop fronts in Kinshasa to punk posters in Camden, Joy takes inspiration from everyday life and translates it through work that is simultaneously intimate, sociopolitical, and autobiographical. At an early stage in their career, Joy has been active in progressive discussion about art and society, including presentations at Tate Britain, and collaborations with various prominent brands.
JOY MIESSI (b.1993) lives and works in East London. Selected exhibitions include: The Second Head, Office and Gallery, LA (2019); The Gift of Skort, Atom Gallery, London (2018) and Do You Know Your Middle? 198 Gallery, London (2018). Miessi has also given several talks including; Work It Out: Reactions To Soul Of A Nation, Tate Modern, London.
** Note: On Thursday 25 July (6:30 – 9pm): An evening with Joy Miessi, an intimate in conversation with Ellen Morrison and audience discussion. We will explore Joy’s latest exhibition: ‘Blue Glass Fortunes’ and the influences/research around the show kindly hosted by EAST.
Rosanna Lefeuvre:
Jane’s Gone (31 July – 4 August)
Rosanna Lefeuvre probes the entanglements between photography and textile. She uses fabrics as the material support of her photographic work but also as a pattern, that both dissimulate and reveal subjects that borrow from the sensuality Barthes describes as the gap between “the glove and the sleeve”: “Is not the most erotic place of the body where the clothing yawns?” Just like classical painting reveals, by covering them, the reliefs of a body whose modesty it feigns, she offers a vision of sensuality and femininity through its symbolic link to fabrics, drapes or floral motifs, questioning our contemporary relationship to intimacy or eroticism. She hand-weaves herself on a jacquard loom and prints a number of her photographs. This materiality transforms our connection to the image into a physical relationship, her images are an invitation to touch reinforced by ever-present silky fabrics and bare skin. Oversized weavings subject the spectator to a double relation: one has to look at the fabrics from a certain distance to understand what they depict but also to come closer to understand the particular process of manufacture.
*R. Barthes, ‘The Pleasure of the Text’ Seuil, Paris, 1973, p. 19.
ROSANNA LEFEUVRE [b. 1993, France] Graduated with an MA in textile design from the National School of Decorative Arts, Paris (2018). Selected exhibitions include Kosminen Gallery, Helsinki (2019); Montrouge 64th Show, The Belfry, Montrouge (2019); 100%, La Villette, Paris (2019) and; Orsay Museum, Paris (2018). Lefeuvre lives and works in Pantin, France.
Florence Hutchings:
The Poetry of the Everyday (7 – 11 August)
In her first solo exhibition since showing with Saatchi Gallery in 2019, Florence Hutchings’ crudely executed domestic scenes have revitalized the genre of interior-scene and still-life painting. Their execution, however, is much more surprising—formed from seemingly haphazard compositions of shapes, collage-like elements, and a vast repertoire of painterly techniques, they create a sort of magical reimagining of Hutching’s own studio space. One sees her painter’s chair, various potted plants, a suggestion of a window, a doorway, a vessel, or – as she has painted in series – her studio ladder, like an arch breaking various painted planes. She states that she is equally as interested in the space around an object as the object itself, which becomes immediately apparent as her brush scours, scrapes, outlines, and traces various elements in and around the picture plane. It is a small selection of pieces that must be seen in person, inspiring, challenging, and full of exploration and optimism.
FLORENCE HUTCHINGS [b. 1996, Kent, UK] lives and works in London, UK. Selected exhibitions include: Kaleidoscope, Saatchi Gallery, London (2019); Seating Arrangement, Delphian Gallery, London (2018); Juice, 5th Base Gallery, London (2018); Mud, Doomed Gallery, London (2017) and Do I Beg this Slender Inch, The Chopping Block Gallery, London (2017). Florence has previously exhibited with BEERS London in Works on Paper (2018).
Jordan Kerwick:
A Declaration of all things Irreverent (14 – 18 August)
Jordy Kerwick’s dense, unforgiving, impasto brushstrokes flatten the perception of space and reinterpret the still-life through a sort of ‘post-punk’, literary-laden, colloquial aesthetic. Recurring elements of iconography create a type of mythos around his work, a kind of Hemingway-esque language of the laissez-faire that lands somewhere between sincerity and parody. With this wry sense of humor and a growing repertoire of references, Kerwick’s instantly identifiable works truly embrace colour for the first time, and the artist effortlessly emboldens his paintings colour: from vibrant greens, pastel pinks, and carmine reds. The self-taught Australian artist explores the relationship between thick patches of colour to both denote and even avoid articulating form. And speaking further technically, this newest body of work sees the young artist truly embrace his craft with confidence and conviction. These intuitive and enticingly tactile marks celebrate the artists’ role in investigating the inherent potential of his media, while elevating the elements of drawing that maintain his irreverent, charismatic style.
JORDAN KERWICK [b.1982, Melbourne, Australia] Solo exhibitions include: Sweep The Leg Johnny, Pt 2 Gallery, Oakland, USA (2019); Diary of an Introvert, Delphian Gallery, London (2018) and Fourth Time Around, Linberg Galleries, Victoria, Australia (2017). Group exhibitions include: 75 Works on Paper, BEERS London (2018); Summer Cool, Anna Zorina Gallery, New York City, (2017), Angry Boys, Galerie Rompone, Koln, Germany (2017), Micro Salon #7, Galerie L’inlassable, Paris, France (2017), Local Group Show, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, (2016). Kerwick lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.
