White City: Constructing for the Uninhabited
Exhibition runs: 15-18 July 2021 Thu-Sat 11-8pm, Sun 11-5pm Private view: Wednesday 14th July, 5-9pm RSVP HOXTON 253's next Grad Shows 2021 exhibition: White City: constructing for the uninhabited lays forth the work created by RCA students during the COVID-19 pandemic and includes work from: Alice Harry, Madeleine Bender, Chleo Li, Nicole Burnay, Orla Jackson, Leo Kremer, Hermine Weerdmeester, Matthew Chung, Xinyu Xu & Maya Ammar Covid Update
Please do not visit the venue if you are ill or displaying any symptoms of COVID-19. The gallery is following Covid-19 safety measures including limiting numbers, making sanitiser and hand-washing facilities available, Booking is mandatory for the Preview of the exhibition. Each booking allows visitors up to 30 min in the gallery with only 15 people maximum in attendance. No booking is required for general opening times, however visitor numbers and social distancing will be observed. Visitors will be required to wear a face covering inside the gallery. Please contact us if you require special assistance or have any queries. |
Inside window frames, through computer lenses, beneath the blanket of ceilings: new worlds have been created. Separate, individual environments have become entwined by distance. The digital plane became fertile ground for new work while white city campus became ghost city: abandoned and uninhabited. Students are presenting the new worlds they have built both together and apart: digital, metaphysical, and imaginary spaces. Themes of ambiguity, oscillation and multiplexity flow through all the work, yet there is also a halting suspension between identity, language and space. These themes, synchronous or not, act as a bridge between different countries: UK, France, China, Lebanon, & USA.
Nicole Burnay’s photography presents an ‘in-between’ space, altering our perception, her images capture layers of ephemeral moments. Similarly, Orla Jackson’s work is rooted in the momentary; exploring city lights at night she presents the temporary environments inhabited or left empty due to Lockdown.
Matthew Chung’s laser cut eyeballs present a window, mirror, and light space that playfully hold the viewer in fascination. So too are we held in the video work of Leo Kremer, suspended in a journey that passes almost imperceptibly. Flow and journey are also present in Chleo Li’s film, where abstract realities are mapped out in her use of ‘sonic textures’, traversing her identity between Eastern and Western cultures. This tension is also present in Maya Ammar’s work. In presenting her Lebanese identity as spectacle she explores conceptions of nations through a feminist lens. Xinyu Xu also explores identity through a feminist lens, questioning how identity and society are bound but also how these bonds may be broken, how they may be made more fluid.
Alice Harry’s work pursues the fluidity of material and language, evoking memory through narrative and stage-crafting, she blurs lived experience with performance. The staging of Hermine Weerdmeester’s work also situates her painting in a blurred and disoriented space, immediate reactions of her surroundings resist time’s flow. Finally, Madeleine Bender’s work, particularly her installations, linger between two worlds, creating a compelling tactile invitation but also a feeling of grotesque repulsion.
All ten artists have created and sustained these multi-worlds whilst isolated from one another, some having never met. As the world begins to ‘re-open’ so too do the works emerge from their cocoons, coalescing within the gallery space, we venture into uncertainty together.
Curated by Alice Harry and Madeleine Bender
Nicole Burnay’s photography presents an ‘in-between’ space, altering our perception, her images capture layers of ephemeral moments. Similarly, Orla Jackson’s work is rooted in the momentary; exploring city lights at night she presents the temporary environments inhabited or left empty due to Lockdown.
Matthew Chung’s laser cut eyeballs present a window, mirror, and light space that playfully hold the viewer in fascination. So too are we held in the video work of Leo Kremer, suspended in a journey that passes almost imperceptibly. Flow and journey are also present in Chleo Li’s film, where abstract realities are mapped out in her use of ‘sonic textures’, traversing her identity between Eastern and Western cultures. This tension is also present in Maya Ammar’s work. In presenting her Lebanese identity as spectacle she explores conceptions of nations through a feminist lens. Xinyu Xu also explores identity through a feminist lens, questioning how identity and society are bound but also how these bonds may be broken, how they may be made more fluid.
Alice Harry’s work pursues the fluidity of material and language, evoking memory through narrative and stage-crafting, she blurs lived experience with performance. The staging of Hermine Weerdmeester’s work also situates her painting in a blurred and disoriented space, immediate reactions of her surroundings resist time’s flow. Finally, Madeleine Bender’s work, particularly her installations, linger between two worlds, creating a compelling tactile invitation but also a feeling of grotesque repulsion.
All ten artists have created and sustained these multi-worlds whilst isolated from one another, some having never met. As the world begins to ‘re-open’ so too do the works emerge from their cocoons, coalescing within the gallery space, we venture into uncertainty together.
Curated by Alice Harry and Madeleine Bender