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___________________________________________________________ Ana Mendes, Drawing II, live performance, detail ___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________ Drawing, scanning, (body)mapping,, Anaa Mendes, group exhibition, the Agency ___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________ Ana Mendes, Drawing II, live performance drawing, Berlin 2017 ___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________ Drawing, scanning, (body)mapping,, Brauchli, Stepputis, Barker, Inst. View, the Agency ___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________ Ruth Barker, Drawings, incapable of reply 2, 2018, photocopy on coloured acetate, ___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________ Heather Agyepong, The Gaze on Agbogbloshie: The misrepresentation of West Africa as dystopia, ___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________ Ruth Barker, Drawings, incapable of reply 3, 2018, photocopy on coloured acetate, ___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________ Drawing, scanning, (body)mapping,, Brauchli, Stepputis, Inst. View, the Agency ___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________ Roland Brauchli, Untitled, pencil marks on falling paper, 2017 ___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________ Brigitte Stepputis, We Are Stardust, 2016, 3-D scan still as print on paper ___________________________________________________________
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Drawing, scanning, (body)mapping… Heather Agyepong, Ruth Barker, Roland Brauchli, Ana Mendes, Brigitte Stepputis @ theAgency, Gallery2 Helena Hamilton, Semblance and Event, Solo Exhibition @ theAgency, Gallery1 19 Feb – 1 April 2018 theAgency. Gallery is exploring an expanded view of drawing with a group exhibition including Heather Agyepong, Ruth Barker, Roland Brauchli, Ana Mendes and Brigitte Stepputis. Post digital drawing opens the medium to explorations beyond working with pencil and paper, such as drawing data from shapes in 3-D scanning, the photocopy as a surface for a performative gesture and photography as a tool for geo-political mapping. Moving beyond the mark, the exhibition clashes approaches to drawing outside of genre specific concerns. Roland Brauchli and Ana Mendes both use the body and physical interventions with pencils on paper in works included in this exhibition specifically. Brauchli situates his practice within abstraction and happenstance markmaking, while Mendes contextualises her gesture as bodypolitic and the examination of drawing/thinking in science and art. For her, the minimal gesture is just one step removed from mapping femininity as well as conceptualising national and decolonised belonging. Brigitte Stepputis outsources drawing to a 3D scanner. Intended for use within architecture, the scanner barely manages to trace human presence. The scanned protagonists become archaeological traces and merge with their background. The limitations of data mapping means, the scanner draws random outlines and ultimately distorts human representation. Stepputis’ filmic and still images take on the form of futuristic etchings. Structure is also relevant in Heather Agyepong’s photographic series ”The Gaze on Agbogbloshie”. Agbogbloshie, a renowned e-waste recycling area in central Accra, draws itself though the images. The traces of disused cables the workers trail through create lines in stark light. Light through acetate is the starting point of Ruth Barker’s second series of photocopied works on coloured acetate with performative traces of colour. Obscured by the process, there is a discernible trace of assertive femininity in the underlying image, which is then abandoned under gestural tracings of greased paint. The series is a set of slightly varied layered image constructions, which allude to the rhythmic and repetitive literary narrative, which is signature to her performance work. The exhibition consciously amalgamates very divergent projects and contextual realities in a cross-medial salon. The central theme of -the line-, -the outline-, - the trace- carries multiple artistic gestures within them; the gendered body, the geo-political and the digitalised gesture and body-minimalism. Examining difference through communality within these works will generate a re-alignment of positions and challenges established categorisations. exhibition specifically. Brauchli situates his practice within abstraction and happenstance markmaking, while Mendes contextualises her gesture as bodypolitic and the examination of drawing/thinking in science and art. For her, the minimal gesture is just one step removed from mapping femininity as well as conceptualising national and decolonised belonging. Brigitte Stepputis outsources drawing to a 3D scanner. Intended for use within architecture, the scanner barely manages to trace human presence. The scanned protagonists become archaeological traces and merge with their background. The limitations of data mapping means, the scanner draws random outlines and ultimately distorts human representation. Stepputis’ filmic and still images take on the form of futuristic etchings. Structure is also relevant in Heather Agyepong’s photographic series ”The Gaze on Agbogbloshie”. Agbogbloshie, a renowned e-waste recycling area in central Accra, draws itself though the images. The traces of disused cables the workers trail through create lines in stark light. Light through acetate is the starting point of Ruth Barker’s second series of photocopied works on coloured acetate with performative traces of colour. Obscured by the process, there is a discernible trace of assertive femininity in the underlying image, which is then abandoned under gestural tracings of greased paint. The series is a set of slightly varied layered image constructions, which allude to the rhythmic and repetitive literary narrative, which is signature to her performance work. The exhibition consciously amalgamates very divergent projects and contextual realities in a cross-medial salon. The central theme of -the line-, -the outline-, - the trace- carries multiple artistic gestures within them; the gendered body, the geo-political and the digitalised gesture and body-minimalism. Examining difference through communality within these works will generate a re-alignment of positions and challenges established categorisations. Artist Bios Roland Brauchli, Exhibitions and Bookdesign, lives and works in London Heather Agyepong is a visual artist & performer who lives and works in London. Her project “The Gaze on Agbogbloshie” was nominated for the Prix Pictet award in 2016 and for the Foam Paul Huf Award 2017. In November 2017 she created a collaborative commission with Tate Exchange. In 2016, she was selected as Mashable’s top 10 female photographers devoted to social justice. She has worked with the Tate, Dulwich Picture Gallery & Wellcome Collection. She has also just recently become an Associate Artist for Talawa’s MAKE : Sustain Artists. Ruth Barker (Leeds, 1979), lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. She specialises on performance art and performative writing. In 2013 she was nominated as Canongate's 'Future 40. Projects include Ruth Barker & Hannah Leighton-Boyce, Castlefield Gallery Manchester, 9 March to 29 April 2018, Strange Attractor, with Man Ray, Ulla von Brandenburg and Dominique Koch, theAgency gallery, 2016 This Thing That We Do, Akerman Daly, London, 2016, Place of Pillars, ATLAS Arts with Edinburgh Arts Festival, 2016, the Freud Museum, London, as part of “Tall Tales”, curated by Helen Wewiora, ‘The Space Beneath My Skin Is Closed To My Reason Today for: A Goddess for a Beauty Centre’, curated by Yen Peng, NAFA Singapore, The White Ink Lecture, LICA, Lancaster, 2015 Circle Work, CCA Glasgow, A Love Song, For Gilgamesh, Camden Arts Centre, London and Sils Projects, Rotterdam, 2013 Ana Mendes is a writer and visual artist based in London, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include 'a tale of Europeans', at the Natural History Museum, Vienna and Universalmuseum Joanneum/Natural History Museum, Graz, Austria ,2017. Group exhibitions include Jerwood Space, London, 2017; Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast, UK (2016); Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna (2016), among others. Mendes has been the recipient of several awards for her works in performance, video, photography and literature, including the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2017, second prize; MAC International 2016, finalist, The MAC, Belfast, UK (2016); fellowship Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany, 2015-2017, IASPIS Artist-in-Residence 2017, and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal (2010/11, 2013 and 2016). Brigitte Stepputis, Designer and Artist, lives and works in London. She is Head of Couture at Vivienne Westwood and an independent artist who works with 3-D scanning technology. She is currently working on a new project with FACT, Liverpool. Recent shows include Testbed, London, with Phil Dobson, 2017, Jikji Festival, with Phil Dobson, Cheongju, South Korea, 2016, The Making, theAgency London 2015, Hanmi Gallery, London, 2014, The Gathering, Mytoro, Hamburg with a./o. Marcus Coates, Jamie Shovlin 2013, Röhsska Museet, Gothenburg 2011/12, the Herrick gallery 2010. |
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