About
Philip Allen, Rana Begum, boredomresearch, Pogus Caeser, Layla Curtis, Penny Davis, Graham Dolphin, Dryden Goodwin, Martin Fletcher Systems House, Lesley Halliwell, Andy Harper, Gemma Holt, Aisha Khalid, Bernard Leach, Edwin Li, Roy Lichtenstein, Max Mosscrop, Eduardo Palozzi, Hetain Patel, Abigail Reynolds, Lucy Rie, Bridget Riley, Dieter Roth, Ed Ruscha, Kim Rugg, Mahbub Shah, Conrad Shawcross, Robert Smithson, Alison Turnbull, Victor Vasarely, David Watkins, Carey Young.
The artists in this exhibition are all exploring the point at which patterns begin to emerge or where they start to disintegrate. The starting point is Robert Smithson's Film âSpiral Jetty' documenting his famed land artwork.
In 1970 he built a large circling promenade in the shape of a spiral into the Great Utah lake in the United States. This is his film documenting the process. The jetty disappeared beneath a rising lake Utah in 1972 and then remerged in 2002.
This process of emergence and disappearance of pattern can be seen throughout the art works in the exhibition. This tracking of pattern has been a key motif of Islamic arts and, and though it has become the driving force behind social sciences, marketing, social planning and politics, the idea of pattern has remained problematic in the visual arts.
The artists in the exhibition employ pattern in a wide variety of ways from the highly decorative work of Victor Vasserely to the more cerebral work of Carey Young.
The artists Andy Harpur, Alison Turnbull and Aisha Khalid all employ different approaches to paint to uncover and disrupt patterns in nature and culture. Mahbub Shah, Kim Rugg, and Abigail Reynolds each employ collage in different ways to draw out hidden social and historical patterns.
The filmmaker Edwin Li quotes 1930s and their interest film-makers and their interest in feedback patterns and disrupts this with the light hearted intrusion of a dog.
The photographer Dryden Goodwin scratches into his photographs to suggest the patterns that are in play during drawing and facial recognition and Graham Dolphin scratches language into found posters suggesting new correlations between text and image.
These diverse artists shift explore pattern not as something that lies on the surface but as the structure that lies beneath.
Please note: A small section of the exhibition will change on 12 September 2009 and the work of a few of the participating artists may no longer on display.
If you are visiting the exhibition after 12 September 2009 looking for a specific artists work please contact the gallery to ensure that it is still on display.
