The Harboured Guest
4 Windmill Street, 4WINDMILLSTREET.COM
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Start date: 24-Oct-2012
End date: 17-Nov-2012
4 Windmill Street is proud to present its inaugural exhibition, The Harboured Guest – a collection of recent works that see a correlation between performance and function. Curated by artist Robin Footitt and avoiding the recent tropes of direct live event interaction, this subtle and suspenseful production is manifested through various media and forms of image creation – be it in terms of process, absence, or elaboration.
Human presence often manifests itself in the painted gesture, with the texture of surface and the fluidity of movement providing literal entry points to further investigation. Painted figures either embody such presence, or withdraw, becoming gestures in themselves – an idea confronted in the paintings of Alex Crocker, Grant Foster and Jamie Partridge. In Untitled (Love) [2012], for example, Foster bleaches a presence out of an acrylic ground. Caroline Walker also frequently takes the figure into an isolated interior, framed by what is present and, via her treatment of space, what is lacking. Congregation and Fan Dance [2012] fascinate in relation to human contact – both showing the formality within napkin folding for social preparation.
“Winner” is a statement across a series of works by printmaker Erica Donovan that uses London’s Olympic legacy as a point of departure. Ownership can also be read across canvas formers made by Richard Baines; an array of objects wrapped together and forming a collective abstract and seemingly undeveloped shape all under the same oval form, evoking Polynesian cartoon imagery from a Hawaiian surf brand either lost or found in the surface.
The removal of surface is also central to Maya Ramsay’s practice. Incarceration [2012] is part of a recent Bletchley Park series whereby Ramsay lifted the top surface of walls from buildings used by code breakers in WWII, capturing spider webs drawn across decades of disuse. Indeed, traces of function enter into the subjects – circus horses – of David Edwards’ photograph, Portmanteau [2012]. Finally, a flip in perspective results in a clash moment in Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom’s video, Symbol [2011].
Curator Robin Footitt (b. 1982, London) studied at Royal College of Art and lives and works in London. Alongside his art practice Footitt has co-ordinated a number of projects including SCREENING (2010), Knightsbridge, London; The Drifting Canvas (2010), Cole, London and Through The Wall (2009), A Foundation, Rochelle School, London.
For general enquiries, artist biographies or more information, please contact art@4windmillstreet.com
Open Thurs-Fri 2-5pm, Sat 11am-5pm or by appointment.
