Thea Djordjadze

About

Westlondonprojects is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Thea Djordjadze. The Berlin based, Georgian born artist will create an installation for the space consisting of existing sculptures combined with different objects and materials. Employing her specific artistic practice the installation will take on its completed form during the actual setting up process.

The artist's working method draws from literature and music as well as certain art historical references from early Modernism, in particularly Surrealism. This is combined with a strong sense of process and an awareness of the potential authority and phenomenology of the art object. She typically produces small to medium scale amorphic constructions, which are often supported by and within more formal elements and structures. Often working with everyday materials such as plaster, wood, textiles, wire and linoleum, there is a particular sense of the domestic realm. This feeling is heightened by the use of found objects (for example carpets and lamps) and the more formal components that often act as makeshift shelf, table or wall.

These hybrid constructions can be elusive and slippery; they combine an almost 'Beuysian' shamanistic or ritualistic use of materials and the literalism found within some minimalist works - especially within the more formal elements of the work. Drawing on the tropes of Surrealist juxtaposition of everyday objects and the narrative conceit of the aura of shamanistic presentation of materials, the resulting works are psychologically effecting and uncomfortable.

Djordjadze's assemblages suggest narratives and personal recollections but refute resolution. Many of the materials and objects used within the works have sensory and suggestive powers, such as the exotic rugs. It is difficult to ignore our own individual experiences of them and what these cultural objects connote - otherness, status and value. However, this starts to get closed down or at least muffled by the confines of the gallery space. We have the opportunity to see and experience its physicality, the pure object.

Joe Scotland. Studio Voltaire, London