About
Arcade is pleased to invite Andrew Maughan to the gallery for a summer residency. Maughan's fusion between residency and exhibition defies form, fixed meaning and finish. It is performative, inquisitive and discursive; it is almost vocal.
Whilst the space is continually used to make work, collaborators are invited to contribute and curate at intervals undetermined and impromptu. Andrew's practice will be influenced by the interventions and the discourse created. The gallery front acts as a window into the activity of the artist and the becoming of a body of work. Like the looking glass, viewers can step into a parallel world reflecting the usual order, where the lines between artist, curator and spectator are blurred. The exhibition-based format is under critique; a system that expects closed thoughts, fine lines and determined roles.
The pieces themselves, entitled Rip-Offs, reflect the sentiments of anti-exhibition by using materials usually discarded: polythene bags from the art supplier Dalerà Rowney and packing card used to support and transport artworks. The materials are pliable, mimicking the residency itself. Using them as a canvas, Andrew paints images that playfully exploit the artistic canon: simplistic, pseudo-Rothkos, Abstract Expressionist imitations, Minimalist allusions and the remnants of other paintings. Rip-Offs describes the way the polythene is ripped and satirises the forgery of masters. These can be hung carelessly, at angles or not hung at all but strewn across structural objects, thus subverting the norms of traditional installation.
The work even transcends the gallery space by documenting the artist's and collaborator's findings on an Internet blog called Response-Call-Response, an apt title for a project cemented in dialogue. The initial collaborators are Charlotte Baker and Maria Teresa Ortoleva. With a background in art history and contemporary art theory Charlotte will be viewing the work from an analytical and philosophical perspective. She will introduce texts and concepts to inform curation and produce critical writings. Maria Teresa is a visual artist researching the phenomenon of imagination and its cognitive ability. She will be creating designs for curation and her own works in response to the residency through a combination of elements, such as writing, photography and drawing.
Process and possibility are at the heart of this show. Giorgio Agamben celebrated his view of potentiality as the phenomenon of what could be but also what could not be. At each and any moment this exhibition could change, could develop, could form new meaning, but it also could not. The beauty of potentiality lies in the prospect of discovery.
Charlotte Baker, July 2013
Andrew Maughan (b. 1987, Newcastle, UK) graduated in Fine Art from Nothumbria University (Newcastle, UK) in 2009. Recent solo exhibition include YOLO, 36 Lime Street, Newcastle, UK and recent group shows include TITLE, The NewBridge Project, Newcastle, UK; Jesmonite on Paper, Malgras|Naudet, Manchester, UK (2013); I Can't Follow You If You Don't Move, Rogue, Machester, UK; Repeat - Repeat, The Alley Project, Detroit, US. Forthcoming projects include those at Supercollider, Blackpool, UK; A3, Birmingham, UK and BALTIC 39, Newcastle, UK (all 2013)
Maria Teresa Ortoleva (b. 1990, Milan, IT) graduated with a BA (Hons) in Painting at Brera Academy of Fine Art, Milan, IT, (2012) receiving twice the Incentive award for Research In The Art Practice. She is currently developing her research and practice in London, as an MA student at the Slade school of Fine Art (UCL). Ortoleva has been awarded the Leverhulme Scholarship to attend the residency programme at Wysing Art Centre, Cambridge, UK (2013).
Charlotte Baker (b. 1989, Cambridge, UK) is a freelance curator and current MA student in Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her thesis is preliminarily titled The Feminist Complaint: Popular Fantasies and Neoliberal Apparitions. Whilst studying her BA in History of Art at University of Manchester she co-founded the Manchester Art Group. She notably initiated the Corridor Gallery in 2012 with fellow founder Humphrey Hendrix.
Response Call Response is an online document of Andrew Maughan's summer residency at Arcade with Charlotte Baker and Maria Teresa Ortoleva.
http://responsecallresponse.tumblr.com/
www.andrew-maughan.com
cargocollective.com/mariateresaortoleva
acuretointeriority.tumblr.com
coming up...
ANNA BARHAM
October 10 - November 09, 2013
For further information or images please contact info@arcadefinearts.com
Twitter: @ArcadeFineArts
