Preparing the Site

About

The exhibition combines new and existing work, as well as site-specific pieces by seven UKbased artists; Anne Bean, Camilla Bliss, Jeannie Driver, Sarah Roberts, Janek Shaeffer and Jasper Weinstein Sheffield, along with an improvised sound performance by musicians and sound artists John Butcher and John Macedo, happening the 19th of May.

The title of the exhibition is linked with the gallery’s current status as a site shifting states. Presently the Bank Space approaches the end of its legacy as a place for the display of art; the building that houses the gallery is intended to be sold, and consequentially the form and function of the site will be redefined and restructured. The space must prepare for change; we must prepare for change. Inspired by this climate of transition imposed on the gallery, the exhibition is structured around notions of transformation, presenting a site-in-flux where materials and meanings are reduced and reformed, recoded and reinvented.

Preparing the Site presents objects, materials and sites uniquely implanted with new meaning and function through artistic process and thought. The artworks on show often convey their messages through exciting material abstraction and/or representation, achieved through attention to surface, texture and display. Visitors to Preparing the Site will encounter a gallery whose physical landscape has been altered, prepared if you will, to communicate notions of transmutation and the shifting of states—the tangible and intangible movement of things, from one presence into another.

Preparing the Site is curated by Emma Rae Warburton and Anna Viani, two London-based emerging curators each completing an MA in Curating the Contemporary art at Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design and the Whitechapel Gallery. Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11:00 – 6:00 PM