Thursday 30 June 2011

NotLost Festival


Towards an Architecture is part of NotLost Festival, a 3 week long arts festival based in Nottingham. Click here for more information.

Towards an Architecture


Sixes & Sevens present Towards an Architecture. An installation featuring works by Nottingham based artist Simon Franklin and Brighton based artist David Bance.

The practices of both Bance and Franklin are concerned with the re-evaluating and re-use of Modernist ideas and motifs. Specifically those of high-Modernist and Constructivist architecture, Suprematist and Minimalist non-figurative art and domestic design.

Whilst both artists share an interest in the achievement of Modernism to blend visual form, conceptual content and a social purpose, Bance and Franklin present differing contemporary positions.

David Bance creates paintings and installations blending visual form and conceptual content with an interest in the physical substance and formal qualities of paint. Bance’s work counteracts the bullish sloganism of the early 20th Century avant-garde and the hubris of high-Modernist architecture with a painterly interest in the qualities of his medium, using brushstroke and mark making in a cautiously experimental way to create strange semi-abstract spaces. His works are rendered in a manner which can be either deliberate and methodical or indifferent and combative, slipping between representational and abstract modes. These contradictory spaces create a more tainted, melancholic interpretation of Modernist art and design.

Simon Franklin’s sculptures reference geometric abstraction and high-Modernist design. His use of bold, matt colours, sleek curves and sharp edges suggest a utilitarian functionality reminiscent of mid 20th Century domestic design. However, his choice of materials (Franklin primarily uses paper) and a playful treatment of scale create uncertainty regarding the artworks’ density and strength resulting in more delicate objects which, as in Bance’s practice, corrupt the Modernist iconography apparent within the work, showing evidence of the artist’s hand, craft elements and ideas of fragility and failure.

The exhibition does not simply re-deploy these historical styles and debates, but presents a more fragile, human understanding of the ideologies and achievements of the Modernist period. Each individual work informs another whilst simultaneously blurring any linear path. This creates a strange space of jarring contradictions; social/Socialist utopia and anti-humanist dystopia, high art and utilitarian design, representation and abstraction, subject matter and material.

Private view: 8th July 7pm - 9pm

Opening times: 09th July - 12th July 12pm - 5pm

Location: Backlit

www.sixesandsevenscollective.co.uk
www.backlit.org.uk
www.notlostfestival.co.uk

Monday 4 April 2011

Pile at Chapter Gallery - Images

Images courtesy of Phil Barbot and Chapter Gallery.




Monday 24 January 2011

'Pile' at Chapter Gallery, Cardiff

Sixes & Sevens members David Bance, Lotti V Closs and Simon Franklin exhibit works at Chapter Gallery in Cardiff from 04.02.11 ~ 20.03.11 as part of 'Pile'. For more details click here.