Sculpture Shock 2014; Subterranean, Patrick Lowry

About

The Royal British Society of Sculptors is delighted to present Sculpture Shock 2014. Now in its second year, this ground-breaking award encourages surprising site-specific spatial interventions in non-traditional spaces, outside the confines of the white cube. The work of the winning artists appears in one of three environments: subterranean (the unseen world underneath our city), ambulatory (without physical confines in movement through space and time) and historic (an illustrious building in London). Lowry's idiom is the replica, the simulacra, the illusion. He creates life-size replicas of places or seemingly functional items common in our everyday life, in order to encourage us to reassess our relationship to the often obscure and illusory economical and political machinations of the contemporary world. After an initial career working as a commercial product designer selling belief in the new and the repackaged, he became disillusioned by the commercial environment and gladly returned to the practice of art. He creates by hand all aspects of his installations, which appear to be perfect copies of the ‘real thing'. He constructs a visually believable whole to convey the essence of his commentary. For his installation in The Horse Hospital, Bloomsbury, London, Lowry explored the murky associations of the subterranean with the underworld, the black market and the execution of forgeries, fakes and counterfeits. Lowry immediately looked beyond the equine associations of The Horse Hospital and became fascinated by its former use as a busy commercial printers. He is creating an installation that will comment on the power structures surrounding the rise of complex and deeply ‘subterranean' global financial systems, of which London is a major centre and driving force. The work addresses the powerlessness of the individual to effect change in the face of economic crashes and crises and the increasing dematerialisation of money and the effect of its obsolescence on our physical and aesthetic experience of the world. The Horse Hospital Colonnade, Bloomsbury London WC1N 1JD For further information, images or to arrange an interview with the artist please contact Helen Bayer, Communications Officer at info@rbs.org.uk or on 020 7373 8615.