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The Stars Down to Earth
Saturday 24th June 2006 – Saturday 22nd July 2006 , 12:00am to 12:00am
This year’s annual Bow Arts Trust exhibition, which opens to the public at East London’s Nunnery Gallery in Bow on Saturday June 24, has been selected by curator and art writer Andrew Hunt. The show, entitled ‘The Stars Down to Earth’, features the work of seventeen artists picked from amongst over ninety members of the Bow Arts Trust, and will run for one month, closing on July 22.
Private View Friday 23rd June 2006 6.30-9.30
The exhibition includes diverse elements, from video documentation and sculpture to formal painting. The title of the show is taken from a collection of essays by Theodor Adorno, and was initially sparked by two separate works. The first of these, Remaking the Planetarium, is a large domed structure made of doors and other reclaimed material by Alan Bond. This will dominate the largest of the Nunnery’s three galleries. The second work by Daniel Lehan consists of a number of framed pages from the artist’s personal diary. Each page contains an entry by Lehan along with a corresponding astrological prediction from a national newspaper.
Around half of the artists present work in the form of installation, mixed media, sculpture or video. These include Giles Corby’s Floor piece Underworld, Brignell and Raimes’ DVD footage of inner and outer space, Maslen and Mehra’s lightbox showing a photograph of a mirrored figure in a Death Valley landscape, Susannah Hewlett’s absurdly theatrical video works and Danny Pockets’ posters featuring blue plastic bags caught in trees.
The other half of the artists are painters. Amongst these is Gordon Cheung, currently featured in ‘British Art Show 6,’ who shows dystopic images of buildings and architecture painted onto a ground of newspaper. Another painter, Dawn Shorten has produced a small series of cloud formations that convey a feeling of suspended reality. Also showing smaller scale paintings are David Saunders, Mandy Hudson, and Robin Dixon, while some large abstract works are presented by Ruth Solomons, Deborah Crofts and Tomoya Yamaguchi, whose repeated motif of white concentric circles on a black ground somehow indicates a cosmic or spiritual concern.
‘It was a real pleasure to select this year’s exhibition’ said Andrew Hunt. ‘And I was very lucky in that a large number of the artists offered up work for the exhibition. If there is a creative side needed in the selector’s role it is the ability to recognise links between works and to allow these qualities to be brought out of their own accord, rather than projecting any existing set of theoretical or formal criteria onto the situation.’
Bow Arts Trust Open Studios
The opening of the Nunnery show also coincides with the 10th annual Open studios of the Bow Arts Trust, where the work of some 90 artist members can be seen. This is one of the main art events in East London, and around 1500 people are expected to attend this year’s Open Studios, which is open to the public during the weekend of June 24-25.
About Andrew Hunt
Since January 2006 Andrew has been Exhibitions Curator at the International Project Space, Birmingham, UK. His recent exhibitions include ‘Writing in Strobe’, Dicksmith Gallery (2006), John Russell ‘Geniess’, Norwich Gallery, (2005), and ‘Like Beads on an Abacus Designed to Calculate Infinity,’ Rockwell (2004). His publishing activities include the imprint Slimvolume, produced on a yearly basis since 2001. He is also Reviews Editor at Untitled, and a regular contributor to Frieze and a number of other journals.
Catalogue available
