Make_Shift

About

Artists: Jake Clark, Fiona Curran, Gemma Cossey, Rosalind Davis, Otto Ford, Neill Fuller, Fran Gordon,  Asger Harbou Gjerdvik, Gunther Herbst, Helen Johannessen, Peter Jones, Alan Magee, Richard McVeitis, Andrea Medjesi-Jones, Milena Michalski, Michaela Nettell, Laurence Noga, Michael Samuels, Silvina Soria, Charles Stiven, Rachel Wilberforce and Andrea V Wright 

To fold, to mark, to gather, to collect, to surround, to encircle, to hang, to distribute, to systematize, to simplify, to distill, to remove, to discard, to disarrange, to modulate, to mix, to bond, to stretch, to join, to repair, to expand. to continue… 

Fifty years ago, artist Richard Serra created the artwork Verb List that became a road map for his own process of making and an influence on the work of many others since. The abridged verb list above emphasizes a compelling attitude towards creativity (or even curating) epitomized by actions, processes and the ideas underpinning Make_Shift.  

The artists in Make_Shift, manipulate and modify different mediums and processes; assembling, layering and collaging both literally and conceptually to disrupt our expectations of objects and images.  

Many of the works in the exhibition acknowledge the mechanized or inhabit its process, such as Gemma Cossey’s repeated gestural marks or Richard McVetis meticulous stitched work. There is also a distinct desire by many of the artists to steer away from the artificiality of screens and the virtual such as with the work of Fran Gordon and Fiona Curran who disrupt our reading of space. Even when digital tools are used in the process of production for example in Otto Ford’s work, his outcomes evidence a strong sense of materiality and a sensual tactility related to the hand made. Many of these artists work across two and three dimensions and back again. Making, shifting and utilizing the provisional or rudimentary materials to construct their work such as Michael Samuels, Laurence Noga, Gunther Herbst and Jake Clark.  

Works in the exhibition circulate a range of diverse thematics, such as landscape and architectural projection, maquettes  and monuments, still life and portraiture, memory and the imaginary construct, abstraction and the grid. The work here is often formed by its own process of making, which is unfixed at the outset but completed through creative evolution; mark making, decision making and a mature sensitivity towards both material and form.