黑料不打烊

A soaring population. Spiralling rents. Old social structures falling apart... Early Modern Europe from the 1500s onwards certainly had its parallels with our own times. So it comes as no surprise that contemporary artists should look to the early Modern era in search of influences to interpret our own. Early Modern Matters presents this tendency through the work of five European artists: Claire Partington, Olivia Kemp, Vasilis Avramidis, Daniel Hosego, & El Gato Chimney. 

Claire Partington鈥檚 recent ceramic figures deal with identity and power, and how status has historically been projected through symbols and codes. While much of her work looks at feminine power, her work in this show, 鈥楢lpha鈥�, looks at male presence through the image of a courtier 鈥� a falconer 鈥� with the interchangeable head of a wolf, suggesting how an individual can be both a submissive servant and yet also a tyrant to those lower in the order. The faithful hunting dog and the delicately figured bird only compound this complex of submission and service: the human being is a social beast, and a climbing one at that. Claire recently received the first place award from the Virginia A. Groot Foundation and has a large commission opening at the Seattle Art Museum in October 2018. Olivia Kemp鈥檚 monumental drawings are exercises in prolonged concentration. With neither beginning nor end, they constitute a stream of consciousness of memories sprawling across the paper. 鈥楢scending the High Pass鈥� is Olivia鈥檚 latest work following a residency in Bavaria. It takes the motif of the early Modern mountain castle, stone-built symbols of social structure, and threads them together in an Escher-like maze devoid of any logic or hierarchy. Instead, these nodes of power become conduits for imaginative association, and stack one on top of the other in a contemporary horror vacui. Olivia Kemp will also be exhibiting in 鈥楶rince and Patron鈥� at Buckingham Palace in September at the request of Prince Charles.