The Private View for this exciting new exhibition takes place at 4.30pm this coming Saturday, 21 March. Why not join us at Woolmarket House on your way to the PV - just a few minutes walk from Groundwork Gallery - to see our latest Viewing Room presentation featuring paintings by Ely based artist Melanie Goemans and Ceramicist Cecilia Willis (open until 4pm).
The work in Out of the Depths stems from the interests explored by environmental art specialist GroundWork Gallery, and the King's Lynn Museum, where the ancient stumps of 'Seahenge' reside - a mysterious timber structure dug out of the mud from the Norfolk coast in 1989, that is now a permanent exhibit at the museum.
Seahenge before excavation in 1989, King’s Lynn Museum, Norfolk Museum Service
The subject of the show has come about because the henge was thought to have been a sacred site when it was exhumed from the sea. The unknown origin of the circular structure raises questions about how much we know manmade materials like plastics once the chemical certainties start to break down and the altered states these molecularly compromised materials morph into following prolonged immersion in the sea. Each artist has a different approach to their relationship with the ocean, what it means to them and what can be salvaged from or created despite or perhaps because of the overwhelming quantities of these materials found in seas all around the world. During the years of engagement with the subject each artist has developed complex, and differing relationships with plastics and how we might see them, as representing something nearer to treasure instead of trash.
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George Tamihana Nuku is a New Zealand artist and carver of the iwi (tribes) Ngāti Kahungunu and Tūwharetoa. He is of Scottish and German descent. His work is distinct in its use of manmade materials such as perspex and polystyrene. As a sculptor, he works with stone, bone, wood, and seashells too, but his use of Styrofoam, and plexiglass and the way he views these materials is unconventional. In George's work, he frequently questions the relationship between us, nature, and culture, using millennia-old traditional elements of Māori culture to contrast them with contemporary themes such as decolonisation, repatriation, and reconciliation.
He has exhibited extensively in New Zealand with solo and group exhibitions. George moved to England in 2005, and he became the artist-in-residence for the exhibition 'Power and Taboo', held at the British Museum (Sept 2006 - Jan 2007). In 2008 he had his first UK solo exhibition at The Captain Cook Birthplace Museum in Middlesborough. Since 2008, he has been collected and has shown works in museums around Europe. These include the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, and the Welt Museum in Vienna, who housed his largest installation to date: Oceans. Collections. Reflections.
Artist/Photographer Frances Kearney is perhaps best known for her large colour landscape photographs centred on the unearthly presence of a single young girl engaged in some unspecified absorbing activity in a post-industrial or natural location. Her photographs describe each element with a signature attention to the beauty inherent in what she finds in the environment.
Frances lives and works on the North Norfolk coast in a house that overlooks the marshes and the North Sea. The stark, changeability of her location has informed how she sees the world. Her images taunt the viewer with visual invention. By placing a vulnerable figure within what seems like an unnatural or stripped out environment, devoid of protection or softness, she manages to orchestrate each element so the child appears strong, content in whatever it is they are doing in the picture. Her settings, which might be an abandoned quarry, the corner of a concrete works, or coastal landslip are pictured with precision. And yet the environment is never the issue. The eroded footings of a wooden jetty or the encroaching piles of gravel do not intimidate the girl, who despite the odds, turns out to be the resilient element in each composition.
The work Frances is showing in this exhibition will mark a new direction, and comes from a parallel activity to her photographic work. It has developed from a lifetime of collecting items she has found along the shoreline near her home. While this is something she has done for some time, lately the materials washed up by the waves have changed, demanding closer scrutiny. Hence the new work.
About the author
Paul Barratt
Paul Barratt started working in contemporary art galleries in 1989, having graduated in Fine Art from Goldmsith’s, London University. He initially worked at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, one of the contemporary art dealers, who dominated the London art market in the 80s and 90s. He was approached by the Lisson Gallery to be gallery manager for the influential art dealer Nicholas Logsdail. This was followed by a short period in New York at Gladstone Gallery, to work for visionary art dealer Barbara Gladstone, working with the artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney.
On his return to London, Paul secured a place on the postgraduate curatorial course at the Royal College of Art, to complete an MA. After graduation in 2001, he worked as an independent curator on several projects in Oslo, London, Brighton and Basel, before joining Paul Vater at his design agency Sugarfree in 2004. He has worked with Paul ever since.