Exhibition
Miles Thurlow: Variable Foot
20 Apr 2013 – 25 May 2013
Regular hours
- Saturday
- 12:00 – 18:00
- Wednesday
- 12:00 – 18:00
- Thursday
- 12:00 – 18:00
- Friday
- 12:00 – 18:00
Address
- 15a Cremer Street
- London
- E2 8HD
- United Kingdom
About
Miles Thurlow: Variable Foot is the fourth exhibition at Kunstraum, a London-based project space with a focus on solo exhibitions of artists based in London's neighbouring cities in Europe and the UK. Kunstraum, meaning 'art room' in German, seeks to form new relationships with the interconnected art scenes of Europe and the rest of the country.In 'Variable Foot', Miles Thurlow presents three sculptural works in epoxy resin, including the major new work 'All The Gods' (2013) made especially for Kunstraum. The exhibition borrows its title from the American poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) whose seemingly contradictory idea of the 'variable foot' described a sense of measure in poetry that has no fixed reference points. The apparent contradictions, tensions and polarised positions within cultural production make up the landscape within which Thurlow's sculptures take their irreverent stances.
'All The Gods' ' a finely detailed epoxy resin casting of two monolithic blocks of polystyrene daubed with expanding foam ' makes irreverent references both to modernist abstract sculpture, and to classical statuary while playing out some of the central tensions in sculpture making today. Touching on either end of a historic narrative of sculpture, Thurlow positions his own practice in a critical relationship with the past, while acknowledging his continuity with it.
Like 'All The Gods', 'hrh' (2010) and 'Small Abyss' (2011) solidify in resin the momentary coming together of materials. 'hrh' is a resin cast of a found statue built up with hand-fulls of clay, a playful take on the immortalising power of busts. 'Small Abyss' is a resin cast of Thurlow's clay bucket at the end of a day's work, the resin capturing an accidental sculpture which questions the Romanticist notion of an artist entering the unknown in search of truth. Thurlow's use of ubiquitous synthesised materials such as polyurethane and epoxy resin acts to neutralise the grandiose associations of the materials from which the original sculptural moments were produced. Throughout, the works in 'Variable Foot' conspire to conflate the poles of 'high' and 'low' culture and to push together the ordinary and the esoteric.
About Miles Thurlow:
Miles Thurlow was born in Colchester, Essex in 1975 and studied Sculpture at Loughborough College of Art & Design (1995-1997) and at Newcastle University (1998 - 2000). He has exhibited his work widely including Glasgow International, Baltic, Gateshead; Royal Standard, Liverpool; Malgras Naudet, Manchester; Edinburgh Art Festival. Miles is Co - Founder and Director of Workplace Gallery in Gateshead. He lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead.
