About
ROKEBY presents a two-person exhibition with Bettina Buck and Peggy Franck.
Both artists create mixed-media installations using industrial, man-made materials or those that foreground aspects of art production to examine the possibilities of materiality, process and the performative aspect of artistic production. The performativity of each artists selected materials are investigated through the process of their own actions and the qualities inherent in their selected materials, in practices that inevitably extend to asking for the active both physical and conceptual - engagement of the viewer.
Franck uses materials and objects in her studio practice, which when transplanted to the exhibition space assume different roles that escape logical categorization. In previous work the artist has incorporated photographic prints, often of assemblages constructed in the studio, that extend into the exhibition space so that image and installation, representation and object, are united and confused. Her work is concerned with hierarchies of display and of content, and the imbalance inherent in process, practice and presentation.
In a similar vein Buck often incorporates industrially produced materials, or materials with strong art historical associations and subsumes the inherent qualities of the materials into the content of the work. Filed Foam incorporates a 140kg piece of Golconda Limestone restraining three pieces of white industrial foam against the wall; the object's immediate potentiality and the durational transmogrification remain with the viewer.
The physical acts that shape both artists work within time and within space are ever present.
Bettina Buck (1974) currently lives and works in Berlin where Dutch artist Peggy Franck (1978) also has a studio.
Bettina Buck studied at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne before completing an MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London. She has recently exhibited with the gallery at Statements, Basel, 2010 the same year as her last solo exhibition at the gallery. Other solo exhibitions include Galleri Opdahl, Stavanger, 2012 and Monitor, Rome, 2010. Recent two person exhibitions include Laure Prouvost and Sara Barker.
Peggy Franck studied at the Academy in s-Hertogenbosch and was an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 2005 and 2006. Franck was a recent recipient of a residency grant at the Künstlerhaus Bethanian, Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Marion Scharmann, Cologne, Fons Welters, Amsterdam and Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin. Group shows in 2012 include Bugada & Cargnel Paris, Autocenter, Berlin and Dorothea Schlüter, Hamburg. Franck's work has been seen at FOAM, Amsterdam, Museum De Pont Tilburg and 176, The Zabludowicz Collection, London.
