Scared Back into (Y)our Body

About

Scared Back Into Y(Our) Body.

A corrupt state installed an incompetent captain who shipwrecked a boat, leaving the majority of the Raft of Medusa’s crew to face an imminent death. Shipwrecked and starving, the crew are forced to fight for a place on a doomed raft. The limits of human endurance scrutinised through a lens of social hierarchy and where rank equates to life.

Theodore Gericault’s “Raft of Medusa” (1818-19) is not only about the will to survive – and its contemporary implications – but also, and perhaps more hauntingly, impermanence. In a poignant affirmation of transience, Gericault used bitumen as a binder for his pigment. The Raft of Medusa is on a permanent trajectory towards a deliberate fade to black.

With this in mind, Scared Back Into Y(Our) Body brings together sculptor Jamie Fitzpatrick and painter Grant Foster to explore where the boundary lines of power systems lay. Both artists use irreverence as a tool to re-address power structures and utilise collage as an attempt to circumnavigate systems of control.  Fitzpatrick and Foster meet where material as matter is degraded and transformed to form new social potentialities.

Jamie Fitzpatrick (b.1985, Southport, UK) is based between London and Glasgow, working in sculpture, film and installation. Solo and two-person exhibitions include; The Magician and The Lover, Deborah Bowmann, Brussels (2020);  hehehehe, Contemporary Forward, Rochdale (2019); Big Dick, Exeter Phoenix, (2018); (loudly) chomp, chomp, chomp), VITRINE, London, (2016) as well as being included in group shows Hope is Strong, Millennium Gallery, Museum of Sheffield (2018); Grim Tales, Cassina Projects, New York (2017); Bloomberg Contemporaries 2015 & 2016; Vordemberge-Gildewart Award (2016); Catlin Award 2016, London (2016); UK/Raine, Saatchi Gallery, (2015). He studied at Royal College of Art (2015) and Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee (2009).

Grant Foster (b.1982, Worthing UK), is a London based artist, working across painting, sculpture, text and sound. Foster’s selected solo exhibitions include: (I’m Not Being Funny), Lychee One, London (2019); Trade Gallery, Nottingham (2018); (Ground, Figure, Sky) Tintype Gallery, London (2017); (Popular Insignia) Galleria Acappella, Naples (2016), Salad Days, Ana Cristea Gallery, New York (2015); Holy Island, Chandelier Projects, London (2014)). In 2019 Grant Foster was Randall Chair at Alfred University, New York and in 2016 he was Fellow in Contemporary Art with The British School at Rome. In 2012 he completed an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art.

There will be a limited-edition publication to accompany the exhibition.