Ana Prata and Hamish Pearch

About

Over the past decade, Prata has created a varied pictorial vocabulary that playfully encompasses the tropes of abstraction and figuration. Without settling into a single style, her works form a kind of personal inventory that ranges formally from expressionist to restrained brushstrokes while exploring traditional genres such as portraiture and landscape. The materiality of the medium is equally important in her works, something that is made evident by her use of unusual types of fabric as a support, often incorporating sections of unprimed surface in the composition. Working primarily with sculpture, Pearch creates fragmented compositions in which objects often acquire an animistic quality. In these works, images of organic elements are combined with furniture-like sculptural pieces to form landscapes or human characters. Mutilated body parts and miniatures of building structures associated to obsolete trades appear as recurrent motifs in his work, suggesting incomplete narratives that, in spite of evoking themes of desolation and loss, seem to be more comic and playful than tragic.

Hamish Pearch (b. 1993, London, UK) is currently studying at the Royal Academy Schools. Recent exhibitions include Go, Soft Opening, London (2018), New Relics, Thames-side Studios, London, (2018), Premiums, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2018), Le Laboratoire, Sans Titre, Marseille (2017), Addams Outtakes, Roaming Projects, London (2017), Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (co-curated and exhibited in), J Hammond Projects, London (2018), Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Primary, Nottingham and ICA, London (2015). Forthcoming will be his solo show On a day like this, Sans Titre, Paris (2018).

Ana Prata (b. 1980, Sete Lagoas, Brazil) earned a BA in Fine Arts from the University of São Paulo. She is currently showing at the 33rd São Paulo Biennial – Affective Affinities – São Paulo, Brazil (2018); and held solo exhibitions at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, UK (2016); Galeria Millan, São Paulo, Brazil (2014 and 2017); La Maudite, Paris, France and Kubikgallery, Porto, Portugal (2015); Tomie Ohtake Institute, São Paulo, Brazil (2012); and Centro Cultural São Paulo, Brazil (2009), among others. Group exhibitions include Os Desígnios da Arte Contemporânea no Brasil, Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil and A Luz que Vela o Corpo É a Mesma que Revela a Tela, Caixa Cultural, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2017); O Espírito de Cada Época, Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil (2015); Festival Internacional de Arte Contemporânea SESC_Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2011 and 2013), Os Primeiros Dez Anos, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil (2011), Lugar Nenhum, Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2013).