Event detail
'Odds and Ends' installation view, Clare Kenny, 2012
'Inside Edge Outside Space' - Clare Kenny
Bureau is pleased to announce 'Inside Edge Outside Space', Basel based artist Clare Kenny’s first solo exhibition in her hometown of Manchester, and the gallery’s inaugural exhibition at 3 Hardman Square, Spinningfields.
Clare Kenny works across mediums (photography, print, sculpture, installation) with a variety of materials, such as found objects and building materials, elevating the seemingly cheap and profane. The manipulation of material is of central significance to her work, as she questions to what extent items fulfill their specified roles. Yet Kenny’s work almost always originates in photography, or simply the idea of the photograph. She uses photographic imagery as a means of navigation, as a discrete work or as a strategy to inform a three-dimensional piece, presenting possible slippages between materiality and subject matter.
The exhibition title 'Inside Edge Outside Space' also plays on such slippage, referencing the photographic printing process; the idea of things being beyond the edge of the page, hovering between the printable two-dimensional image and the three-dimensional space. Additionally, it alludes to the physicality of the new exhibition space at 3 Hardman Square, with vast circumferential window space allowing for exhibitions to also be viewed externally.
Kenny applies methods from painting and sculpture to her photographic work: images are printed on paper or canvas, echoing the properties of mid-century painting, and C-Type prints rolled and sited as statuesque columns, or crumpled on gallery floors and curling off museum walls. 'Inside Edge Outside Space' includes new photographic works in this vein, and existing works 'Something and Nothing' and 'White Noise' in newly configured sculptural incarnations.
These works are shown alongside 'Odds and Ends', an evolving installation of a continuing series of sculptures consisting of plaster elements cast from an archive of everyday objects, such as washing up bowls, buckets, and gugelhupf forms. These casts are Kenny’s way to make three-dimensional ‘photographs’, recording her environment not with a camera, but through objects that act as negatives from which she cre¬ates a positive form once again. This work’s title references this, as the term “odds and ends” describes a selection of objects that might remain as traces and reminiscences of past activities; she uses such forms as documents of events or moments, transforming objects into records.
In Kenny’s practice everything has the potential to become something else. Reality and representations of it are also present in her use of vinyl, plastic foils and spraypaint, which are utilised in order to look like, or stand-in for, other materials such as marble or stone. Most of her objects and images seem to base themselves around the idea of real and fake, truth and lie, positives and negatives, again as in photographic film. This material fakery is not surprising as Kenny is trained in trompe l’oeil painting techniques and together with the manipulation of photographic prints, she creates multi-layered and multiple versions of her reality.
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3 Hardman Square is owned by Credit Suisse Asset Management (EuroReal Fund), advised by Müller International. Designed by Foster and Partners, with a newly refurbished foyer designed by AEW Architects, it is one of Manchester’s prime city centre properties located at the heart of the acclaimed Spinningfields business district. Bureau is pleased to be working with CBRE and Müller International at 3 Hardman Square in an innovative arts and business partnership to support Art in Manchester.
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More Information on Clare Kenny:
Clare Kenny (b. 1976, Manchester, UK) is based in Basel, Switzerland and graduated from BA Fine Art at Chelsea School of Art and Design, London (2002), and MA Art in Public Spheres (2010) at Hochschule fuer Kunst und Gestaltung, Luzern, Switzerland. Inside Edge Outside Space is Kenny’s first solo exhibition in her hometown of Manchester, and the second time she has exhibited with Bureau. Previous solo exhibitions include: The Frame, DOLL Espace d’art Contemporain, Lausanne (2012); Odds and Ends, Galerie Gisèle Linder, Basel; Something and Nothing, Zip, Basel; and Your Truth Is My Lie, ABBT PROJECTS, Zürich (2011).
Recent group exhibitions include: Lapses, Saks Gallery, Geneva; Splitting Metaphors with Natasha Rees, Vitrine Gallery, London; No Man Is An Island, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; SWISS ART AWARDS 2012, Messehalle 4, Basel; Off The Beaten Track, Von Bartha Garage, Basel; Pursue Other Avenues, Corner College, Zürich; ART43BASEL, Gisèle Linder Galerie, Basel; Fill This White Up To The Roof, Kasko, Basel; The Thing Itself, Abbt Projects, Zürich (2012); Ready To Print, White Space, Zürich; Memory of a Hope, Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool; Das Weiss Haus, Vienna; Labor, Budapest; We Are All In This Together, Bureau, Manchester; Das Wandernde Bild, Coalmine Fotogalerie, Winterthur (2011); Regionale 11, Plug-in, Basel; ARTFORUM Berlin, Gisèle Linder Galerie, Berlin; MAPS Ausstellung, Messehalle, Luzern; ART41BASEL, Gisèle Linder Galerie, Basel; SWISS ART AWARDS 2010, Messehalle 3, Basel; F#, Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel (2010); Des Mondes Voisins, Galerie Gisèle Linder, Basel; Regionale10, Kunsthalle Liestal; IN-SITU, Kunsthalle Luzern, Luzern; The Gallery and The Store, VOLTA ARTFAIR, Basel; and Objects Intervene, E-halle, Basel (2009).
Past exhibitions and projects have been reviewed in Aesthetica, Art Newspaper, Citizen K International, Frieze, Mister Motley, Regioartline, and Swiss News Magazine. Kenny is represented by Vitrine, London, and is a current recipient of the IAAB Residency award, in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, until June 2013.
www.clarekenny.com
More information on 3 Hardman Square:
www.credit-suisse.com // www.muller-london.com // www.cbre.co.uk // www.aewarchitects.com
The exhibition preview and launch event is kindly supported by Müller International and AEW Architects.
http://www.bureaugallery.com
