Exhibition
Swing and Swirl
7 Jul 2016 – 30 Jul 2016
Cost of entry
free
Address
- 28A Devonshire Street
- London
- W1G 6PS
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- Tube: Baker Street - Regents Park
About
Undulating leaves of wood cast mesmerising shadows, alongside curled fragments of paper freed from books. Swing and Swirl brings together ethereal mobiles by Juliet and Jamie Gutch and proviking paper cuts by Thurle Wright. The lightness of the elm in the mobiles echoes the swirling pieces of paper, proposing a dialogue betwen materials, rhythms, movements and forms.
The butterfly effect inspired Juliet and Jamie Gutch’s pieces for the show. The idea of how people and movement in a room affect their mobiles reminded them of the effect of the beating of a butterfly’s wing causing, sometime later, a hurricane on the other side of the world: the idea of chaos and consequence. With their mobiles “you just need to walk past them and they move. If you blow on them they move fast, sometimes jerkily. If you're still, they are still”. The beautiful shapes and forms follow Lorenz Attractors that represent the chaos theory or the butterfly effect. For these works, Juliet and Jamie have also been experimenting with a range of new techniques - using ink to give a wash over the wood and using text on the material.
The different elements of each mobile are in perfect balance, they glance past each other, suggesting an intention to touch, but never doing so. Juliet and Jamie’s work is about balance: “Through our work we want people to wonder about balance and to experience what happens when balance is lost, not found or restricted in some way. We want people to understand the sculptural language of mobiles and its relevance today.”
Juliet and Jamie both studied languages, at Birmingham University and Cambridge University, respectively, developing their artistic style and direction independently, before meeting in 2001. Juliet and Jamie were commissioned to create an ambitious 12-metre mobile in the £35m John Lewis at Stratford for the 2012 London Olympics, which was inspired by larks flying across East End marshes. In 2014they completed A