Drift

About

Drift is a group show envisaging a utopian future in which the spatial distinction between the external ‘urban' and the internal ‘domestic' has been broken down via the free interplay of fine art, architecture, and design. The exhibition will open for one month from 7 March 2012, and will take place at Lumen United Reformed Church — an RIBA award-winning Modernist building located in King's Cross. Presented by Blockwork Art, Drift takes its lead from the Situationist notion of derive (literally, ‘drifting') — a world in which nomadic urban dwellers can drift seamlessly through hybrid domestic/urban zones of habitation, or ‘constructed situations', with the power to ‘stimulate new sorts of behaviour'. To this end, the show will feature an eclectic mix of work by emerging artists, makers, and designers — with traditionally-defined fine art and design placed alongside those practices that sit resolutely between the two. Through this process, Drift seeks to question the validity of such distinctions in the first place. Exhibitors: David Amar's design practice rejects functionality as a central precept, allowing the tool or component to direct form according to their intrinsic dictates; just as a certain bracket hints to a certain type of connection, the parts of a dismantled chair may ask to be reassembled altogether differently. Benjamin Beker's work draws inspiration from the 1950s-60s Communist/Modernist building that put Le Corbusier's vision of a city as an idealised social model to the test, and examines the darker reality of current life in such a constructed environment. Natasha Conway's painting fosters creative intuition, working towards an unknown result that is ultimately left unresolved; hovering on the verge of ‘becoming', her work reflects that uncertainty characteristic of the contemporary. Edward Coyle's paintings overlay images of existing architecture, adding and subtracting elements to create a sense of arrested development — a picture plane of potentiality — that tests our sense of scale and provenance. Aidan Doherty's paintings investigate texture, abstraction, and geometric forms, creating formal relationships between random elements by building layer upon layer, which he then excavates to discover new and unexpected scenarios. Anna M. R. Freeman creates site-specific painting-installations bordering on theatrical set design, that see two-dimensional canvases bent and moulded around architectural armatures to immerse the viewer in a new environment. Alejandro Guijarro makes photo-works that suggest spatial expanse through the absence of image, in which hazy subjects emerge from out of grey nothingness, and by which the artist undermines the apparent authority of photographic representation. Simon Harlow creates colourful and dynamic interiors, furniture, sculpture, and 2D works: sometimes funny, sometimes serious, his art operates in dialogue with its context, thereby inviting the viewer to look upon that context with a fresh pair of eyes. Justin Hibbs work is a renegotiation of the visual language and ideological legacies of modernism. From the spaces of modernist architecture to the black and white documentary photography through which we now view its history, he explores the perception and representation of space in both two and three dimensions. Colin McDougall designs and makes architecture-inspired furniture, taking the lead from Modernism in his attempts to achieve that perfect balance between aesthetic form and no-nonsense function. David Ben White creates what he describes as ‘painting pavilions' — structures that not only house the artist's paintings, but also everyday domestic items, such as lamps, vases, books etc, expressing the way in which domesticity itself is an artistic construct. Tobias Wootton explores human interference in natural landscapes — how we process and alter existing environments, and manufacture new landscapes useful to us — through images that confound the viewer with questions of locality, scale, and authenticity. For Editors: Blockwork Art (@blockwork_art) is a newly established arts organisation, producing commercial exhibitions in unusual venues that feature art and design pieces by emerging artists and makers. Just as the Blockwork team refuses to recognise a finite distinction between art and design, so too do we hope to break down the division between commercial gallery and public exhibition — approaching the former with the curatorial creativity and artistic sensibility usually associated with the production of the latter. We work with artists and makers who have achieved critical acclaim and commercial success — from exhibiting in Bloomberg's New Contemporaries, and being featured in John Moore's Contemporary Painting Prize, to selling work to Charles Saatchi, and setting up shop at the Milan International Furniture Fair.