August 2008
"One Thing Against Another" invites five artists to make sculptural works for a number of public buildings local to aspex, and in the gallery itself: the Norrish Central Library, Victoria Park Aviary, the Natural History Museum butterfly house, and Portsmouth Harbour Station. The artists will negotiate these very particular contexts with an inquisitive and generous spirit, as well as presenting work in the gallery.
These artists share a seemingly blind preoccupation with materials and construction. They tend to create works whose method of realisation is explicitly self-evident, suggesting a process of playful invention and experimentation. Much of the work will be made on-site.
The exhibition will foster an irreverent approach to form, materials and physical environment. It will rejoice in the slapstick of short-lived materials and provisional arrangements. In their work the artists confront walls, windows and columns with craft and ingenuity. The exhibition will embrace contingency in a number of sculptural works that lean, prop, hang, conceal and encrust. These works operate beyond the space of a plinth or frame. Whether in the gallery or outside in other public spaces, they rub-up against their immediate physical landscape for support.
Sam Basu’s (born 1967, lives in London and France) drawings and sculptures have been designed for the guinea pig enclosure at Victoria Park aviary, popular with local children.
James Ireland (born 1977, lives in London) has produced a major new sculpture at Portsmouth Harbour Station. Constructed in the 70m window along the platform, the work reflects ambient light from both station and harbour and reveals anew the view of the adjacent HMS Warrior built in 1860.
Eduardo Padilha (born 1964 in Brazil, lives in London) will introduce a series of soft sculptures and window stencils into the late modernist Norrish Central Library.
David Kefford (born 1972, lives in Cambridge) will make hanging sculptures amongst the plants in the butterfly house at Cumberland House.
Drawings, video and sculptural work related to the off-site interventions will engage with the gallery at aspex, built in 1814 as a naval storehouse. Alice Walton’s (born 1972, lives in London) intervention in the gallery includes the construction of a plasterboard and cardboard ‘wall’ sculpture, both as an obstruction and a support for other work.
The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of talks, family workshops and an interpretive guide.
One Thing Against Another is supported by the Henry Moore Foundation, Arts Council England, South East, Portsmouth City Council, Portsmouth Library Service, Portsmouth Museums Service, Portsmouth Parks Service, South West Trains, FA Projects and Kate McGarry Gallery.
ENDS
Editors’ Notes
One Thing Against Another curated by Oliver Sumner continues the programme of intriguing and lively exhibitions at aspex, Portsmouth’s leading contemporary art gallery. Founded in 1981, aspex moved into new premises in the Vulcan Building on the waterfront at Gunwharf Quays in December 2006. The transformation of this disused naval storehouse into a bright and inviting arts space, that combines the best of the old and the new, won a Royal Institute of British Architects award in 2007.
The exhibition is open 10.30am – 6pm Tuesday – Saturday, 11 – 5pm Sunday. Closed on Mondays, admission is free.
Oliver Sumner, curator of One Thing Against Another, the exhibiting artists and Joanne Bushnell, Director at aspex, are available for interview.