About
VITRINE is delighted to present a two-person exhibition of object and print based works by Clare Kenny and Natasha Rees. A common starting point for both artists is their use of photographic imagery as a means of navigation. Whether to employ a photographic image as a discrete work or as a strategy to inform a three dimensional or moving image piece, Kenny and Rees utilise the photographic image as an intrinsic material.
The title of the show originates from solecisms in language, and is intended to act as a type of 'stand-in' logic for certain visual registers, and present some possible slippages between materiality and subject matter.
Kenny works with a variety of materials, such as found objects and building materials. The manipulation of material is of central significance to Kenny's work. Using found objects and building materials, the artist questions to what extent these items fulfill their specified roles.
Reality, and representations of it, is explored not only within the images Kenny nominates, but also in the use of her chosen materials, which often imitate others, such as marble or stone. Most of her objects and images revolve around ideas of real and fake, truth and lie, positives and negatives. Their material transformations and the Mise en scene Kenny then creates with these objects are intended to appear ambiguous, to lead the viewer down many paths of thought inducing a variety of conclusions.
Rees is interested in the tension between order and repetition, as a roundabout way to question how any hierarchy of systems may subsist. Rees ubiquitously uses a range of media: drawing, object, moving image and print that mutually inform a direction for both concept and the formal development of an idea or ideas, often in tandem. The processes by which an idea comes into clarity, often form the body of work itself.
For Splitting Metaphors, Rees has developed a series of three dimensional and print works educed in part, from a vast, personal library of images that has been evolving since mid-2006. In particular, images that document fires, disaster (both natural and human-induced), collapsed, exploded or demolished architecture and public uprisings. Importantly, most of the images are sourced from the internet, Sunday supplements, news and free magazines.
Clare Kenny was born in Manchester, studied her BA at Chelsea school of art London and MA at HSLU Luzern, Switzerland, and has been living and working in Basel, Switzerland for the last five years. She has had solo shows amongst others at Gisele Linder Galerie, Basel; ABBT Projects, Zürich and DOLL espace d'art contemporain, Lausanne. Group shows include Coalmine fotogalerie, Winterthur; Von Bartha Garage, Basel: Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool: Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz. She has twice been shortlisted for the Swiss art Awards and shown with Gisele Linder at ARTBASEL and Artforum Berlin.
Natasha Rees was born in Caerleon, Wales, and lives in London, UK, working as an artist and writer. Rees has consistently exhibited in Asia, Europe and UK, over the past 6 years, namely: Studio Voltaire, London; Dicksmith Gallery, London; Artprojx, London; Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; V22, London; Salon fur Kunstbuch, Vienna; Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Studio 44, Stockholm; RBR Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Woodmill, London; XRAY/Resoaction at Frieze Art Fair, London; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Dilston Grove, London.
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