About
Kingsland Road Studio would like to present 'Presence - Absence', the first exhibition in this uniquely versatile and exciting new space. New works by up and coming artists Zachary Eastwood Bloom, James Irwin, Brendan Olley and Alida Sayer will explore aspects of society that are that are lived with everyday, yet are intangible, forgotten or ignored. Different approaches are taken to investigating their preoccupations with technology, communication, memory and perception.
Zachary Eastwood Bloom uses digital processes to create his two and three-dimensional works, meticulously engineered in the virtual realm before being translated into tangible objects. An antique table is shown, partly milled down according to a geometric digital design, contrasting the elaborate detailing of the original. In âWe Control the Horizontal and the Vertical' Eastwood Bloom illuminates multiple layers of perspex sheet, the edges of which are cut to a digital pattern. Suspended vertically, light is emitted through the cut edges only, forming a three dimensional digital geometry. Investigations into the use of light continue in his illuminated, perspectivised 3D digital landscapes that float within individual boxes, mimicking the isolation of the on-screen digital design process. Both Eastwood Bloom's creation and making occurs in the digital realm without physical intervention, drawing attention to our everyday relationship with technology.
James Irwin makes minimal, conceptual work that demands interaction. He strips back technology to its fundamental components, making literal that which is intangible. A main interest is the archiving of digital art works in galleries and museums, and how work that is often transient and temporary can be recorded and remembered. In a sculptural simplification of digital typing, a dial must be moved by the viewer for flourescent light bulbs to illuminate and form each letter of the alphabet in turn, making the digital analogue and exploring the human agency in digital communication. Drawings based on computer programming systems, are given titles that detail the rules the computer system follows. Irwin also creates a space that the Internet cannot get to, literally âcontaining' a network free cube using Internet network blocking material. This allows him to comment on our modern dependency on certain technologies.
Brendan Olley will show a performance piece, recorded in Pyramiden, an abandoned ex-Soviet mining town in the Arctic desert. He plays an abandoned piano to a mountain, creating a haunting echo, and documents his actions on film. The piece takes as its starting point the vastly numerous exiles enforced during Stalin's Soviet regime. The instrument technically remains under Russian ownership after being left, abandoned and forgotten, in 1980. That the sound does not and will never reach the top of the mountain expresses the futility of the action and comments on the historical corruption of socialist hierarchy, as well as being a swan song to a melting mountain.
Alida Sayer creates what she sees as âthree dimensional stilled animations'. Her dynamic typographic works attempt to capture the transcendental and intangible, namely the human perception of time. Inspired by narratives that explore experiences of trauma, Sayer provides a visual representation of individuals' encounters with altered states of reality and consciousness. Quotations from Kurt Vonnegut's âSlaughterhouse V', Haruki Murakami's âThe Mirror', and âTransparent Things' by Vladimir Nabokov are arrested within her work; printed, cut, painted and projected onto layers of paper and acetate. Sayer will show her first large-scale work - a pulsating, freestanding piece comprised of large format sheets of acetate, with letterforms exploding from the multiple layers, trapped within the piece and moving in and out of visibility.
Biographical Notes
Zachary Eastwood Bloom (b1980) studied Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art from 2008-2010. He has been named one of New York Times âOnes to Watch' in 2011, was a Frame Magazine âBest Student of 2010', and his work has appeared a number of times in Crafts Magazine. Eastwood Bloom has exhibited widely throughout the UK, and his work can be seen in the British Crafts Council's touring exhibition âLab Craft', and the Royal British Society of Sculptors exhibition. He is represented by Gift Gallery, London.
www.zacharyeastwood-bloom.co.uk
James Irwin studied Fine Art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, graduating in 2005, and went on to complete a Masters in Computational Studio Arts at Goldsmith's College between 2008-2010. He was awarded the 2009 - 2010 Professional Preparation Masters Scheme by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and has participated in a number of group exhibitions since 2005 in London, Liverpool, Brighton and Newcastle. He has had two solo shows at Goth on Bus, London, âMonument to the Alphabet', 2010, and â10', with Everything is Number, in 2009.
www.jamesirwin.net
Brendan Olley graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2010 studying Applied Photography. Since 2010 he has been working on a year long project in the world's most northern town Pyramiden, 200 miles from the north pole. The project seeks to explore escapism and the unknown. Olley co-founded Kingsland Road Studio in 2010, and he plans to continue his studies at MA level.
Alida Sayer works across the fields of typography, graphic design, 3D-design, animation and illustration, using a combination of both hand-crafted and digital processes. Recent projects and commissions have included music artwork, fashion branding, sculptural installation, set-design and animated film titles. Sayer studied Architecture then Illustration at Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 2009 and winning a DA&D Best New Blood Award and an :Output Foundation Print Creativity Award (Amsterdam) in the same year. Her debut solo exhibition took place at Marsden Woo Project Space in 2010, and her work is featured in the books 3D Typography by Jeanette Abbink and Emily CM Anderson (Mark Batty Publisher, 2010) and Lettering: A Manual of Process by Andrew Haslam (Lawrence King, 2011).
www.alidarosie.co.uk
About Kingsland Road Studio
Kingsland Road Studio is an exhibition and studio space in East London, founded in 2010 by four young photographers and designers - Christopher Fields, Ian Higginson, Alex O'Byrne and Brendan Olley. The use of this large, versatile space is offered to like minded people, providing a place for creative discourse and process to be realised, with the aim of building up strong relationships within the creative community. Kingsland Road Studio has been used for photoshoots by Vogue.com, French Connection, Marie Claire and new magazine Ponystep.
kingslandroadstudio.com
Words by Rachael Crabtree
