/// C O N S T R U C T S ///

2009-09-05T00:45:00.002+01:00

Exhibition Map

2009-09-04T10:24:00.001+01:00

General Exhibition Documentation

2009-09-03T13:21:00.002+01:00

Opening Night

Image Credits: Ric Warren

Individual images of each artists work for the exhibition can be found by clicking on the names in the list to the right of this page.

Constructs 2009

2009-08-11T00:11:00.015+01:00

/// PREVIEW - Friday 4th September 6 - 10PM ///
Open Daily / 5th - 11th September / 12 - 3PM
CLOSED SUNDAY
@ WHITE HOUSE, 32 Washington Street, Glasgow (Next to Pentagon Centre)
/// Click here for directions ///

CONSTRUCTS features a selection of emerging artists working in a variety of disciplines and aims to bring together work that references or finds its inspiration from the structures, materials and forms of our man-made surroundings. Featuring both the work of artists whose practice naturally fits this theme, as well as those who have created new works specifically for the show. The exhibition is a celebration of architecture, engineering, geometry and construction. The 13 artists have responded the show title using sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, performance, photography and video.

The exhibition has been organised and selected by artist Ric Warren and features the work of 13 emerging artists. With the exception of Joel Dever (University of the Arts London), all artists have at some point spent time studying at The Glasgow School of Art and many now hold studios at Clydebrae Studios in Govan. The show is an attempt to bring together different generations of GSA's recent output, giving graduates with various levels of experience the opportunity to exhibit together and share skills / knowledge. CONSTRUCTS has been put together with a very limited budget with no outside / public funding. The exhibition relies on the hard work and commitment of all involved and particular thanks goes to The White House for hosting the show.

Definition

Construct

- To build or erect something, typically a building, road, or machine.

- To form (an idea or theory) by bringing together various conceptual elements.

- (in mathematics) to draw a geometric figure that meets specific requirements.

Featured Artists

Keith Allan / Kyla Bruce / Joel Dever / Lorne Ferguson / Caroline Gallacher / Steve Helm / Amy Joslin / Dougie Laing / Jennifer Paley / Neville Rae / Erik Smith / Sam Stead / Sierra Stinson / Ric Warren

If you require more information regarding the show and its exhibitors, or are interested in re-exhibiting / purchasing any of the work, please contact: ric(dot)warren(at)yahoo(dot)com

White House Gallery

2009-08-09T12:32:00.002+01:00

(Next to Pentagon)

32 Washington Street
Glasgow
G3 8AZ

View of Washington Street from Argyle Street ( pedestrian access) - GoogleEarth Street View

White House Gallery Entrance - GoogleEarth Street View
Arial Map - GoogleEarth

White House Gallery

Keith Allan

2009-08-09T12:29:00.006+01:00

Untitled Drawings 1-3 & A Road on which to Prosper, 2009 (CONSTRUCTS, White House)

Untitled, 2009

Biography

Graduating from the Glasgow School of Art's Environmental Art department in 2008, Keith Allan lives and works in Glasgow and is a studio holder at Clydebrae Studios, Govan. He was awarded the David Harding Public Art Prize 2008 and has exhibited extensively in London and Glasgow.

Artists Statement

I am greatly interested in researching how social spaces create communities and the importance of industry in relation to the surrounding area, landscape and how social change, in conjunction to factories and workhouses, has determined the environment of the people and architecture of the area.

Kyla Bruce

2009-08-09T12:22:00.003+01:00

Stories from Palestine (Installation View), 2009 (CONSTRUCTS, White House)

Biography

Klya Bruce graduated from the Environmental Art & Sculpture department at Glasgow School of Art in 2008. She is now based in London and pursuing a career in film whilst also continuing to develop and create her video art.

www.gameoverfilms.net

Joel Dever

2009-08-09T12:15:00.002+01:00

Nebo (Installation View), 2009 (CONSTRUCTS, White House)

Biography

Born in Tadcaster, Joel Dever is now based in London after graduating from Byam Shaw School of Art (UAL) in 2008. He has exhibited extensively across the UK and has delivered performance workshops internationally.

Artists Statement

Joel Dever's practice is perhaps best described as 'performative sculpture'. He often exhibits relics of his attempts to conquer (often impossible, and always potentially dangerous) self-set tasks. Dever composes these 'assault-course' sculptures using everyday readymades and through his engagement with them, highlights the fragility of an organic subject (himself) vs the products we make.

Lorne Ferguson

2009-08-09T12:12:00.002+01:00

The Bonnie Ship of Diamond, 2009 (CONSTRUCTS, White House)

Scarba / x500 / Mound, 2009 (CONSTRUCTS, White House)
SPEEDERSEED / x200, 2009 (CONSTRUCTS, White House)

Caroline Gallacher

2009-08-09T12:05:00.007+01:00

Single Skin, 2008
slip into my skin and spend the night / young, hot and single G.S.O.H / Annihilated on the flag of Surrender, 2009

Biography

Caroline Gallacher lives and works in Glasgow and graduated from the Environmental Art course at Glasgow School of Art in 2008. She was awarded the Royal Scottish Academy's Sculpture Prize for her work in the 2009 RSA New Contemporaries exhibition.

Artists Statement

My work often appears temporary and un-fixed. This has been significant in all work, suggesting the latent potential for kinetic energy and change. Previous works have used building materials as I regularly observed these materials arranged in different formations on city centre building sites. I viewed them as happenings that proliferate the landscape as found sculptures, public art works created through subconscious interaction; compositional traces of human activity.

Now working from a home studio, the materials used and scale of work have shifted. Gravity, temporality, structure and volume all still form core elements of the work. However, domestic items are now copulative with industrial materials, producing new associations between personal and public. A sexual element has creeped into the work in the form of ripped stretched nylon tights chosen for their elastic quality to hold weights from a grandfather clock. Foam is violently pushed/crammed into a wall by a length of bright bar industrial steel. The materials are active in their relationship with each other; at times the relationship seems violent at others plainly erotic.

Caroline Gallacher

Steve Helm

2009-08-09T12:00:00.003+01:00

Biography

Born in Huddersfield (Yorkshire), Steve Helm is based in Glasgow and is a studio holder at Clydebrae Studios, Govan. He graduated from Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art in 2008 and was awarded the Professional Practice Award for his degree show.

Artists Statement

At this stage I believe that I am building upon a mode of inquiry into how I take responsibility for practicing as an artist. I have come to realise that Art, for me, represents a resistance to economic, cultural, social and religious facts and that being an artist involves taking responsibility for a kind of disobedience when producing artwork both publicly and privately. My intention as an artist is to let go of the notion of outcome and possession and to commit myself to forms of action that lend themselves to surrender, presence, and latent excess. I attempt to use sculpture and installations as platforms or vessels that attests to these headless forms of action, that attend the hand, and also become tools for engaging with and emancipating myself from facts. I use wood and metal to try and compose formal structures and shapes that are designed for the display and/or to facilitate actions involving base/excess materials such as clay and soil.

Over the last year my work has been informed by George Bataille’s theory of l’informe (the formless), In which he spoke of the tasks of words instead of their meaning and required that each thing have its own form and that what formless designates “has no rights in any sense, and gets itself squashed everywhere, like a spider or an earthworm.” This began to trigger a shift towards, what Bataille termed, a ‘heterological’ approach to making work, which is, in essence, the science of what is entirely ‘other’.

www.stevenhelm.blogspot.com

Amy Joslin

2009-08-09T11:58:00.003+01:00

PARTTRAP, 2009

Biography

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Peru / Salisbury, Amy Joslin is now based in Glasgow after recently graduating from Sculpture at Glasgow School of Art (2009).

Artists Statement

Predominantly sculptural, at times animated through performative works, my practice broadly explores relationships between object and body, ‘other’ and ‘self.’ It finds influence from structural forms found in aspects of architecture and industry, whilst also initiating a dialogue between these and the more organic and natural. My work often plays with ideas surrounding functionality in relation to form, and has recently been dominated by an exploration of ceramics; I am fascinated by this material’s versatility, its metamorphic properties and the role it has played within differing cultures. My approach to art-making is to allow work to develop intuitively, and I consider the act of creating of equal importance to the final outcome.

Dougie Laing

2009-08-09T11:51:00.003+01:00

Degree Show, 2009 Pallet, 2009

Biography

Based in Glasgow and a studio holder at Clydebrae Studios, Govan. Dougie Laing has lived extensively in New York and London before returning to his native Glasgow to study Sculpture at Glasgow School of Art where he graduated in 2009.

Artist’s Statement

I am interested in reassessing cultural objects and materials by stretching the internal logic to reveal new possibilities. My work is an ongoing process of investigation, usually showing evidence of the making whither it be carving, moulding or the results of failed experiments, hopefully showing the destructive as well as creative elements of production. Everything appears at a stage of development, sometimes unfinished. Nothing can be resolved there is always the possibility for something else to happen. Although there is a playfulness, I like to make the viewer slightly ill at ease, inviting and threatening at the same time.

Jennifer Paley

2009-08-09T11:26:00.003+01:00

Solomon and the Deck Chairs, 2009

Biography

Born in New Jersey (USA), Jennifer Paley now lives and works in Glasgow. She graduated from the Painting department at Glasgow School of Art in 2008 after transferring from Arcadia University (Pennsylvania, USA) in 2006. Her degree show was awarded The Royal Glasgow Institute Award 2008. In addition to continuing to develop her practice as a painter, Jennifer is also the lead singer of the band 'Paper Planes'.

Artist Statement

I am interested in ideas of nostalgia and forgotten or discarded personal histories. Sourcing much of my material and inspiration from old photographic records, my work often attempt to reinvigorate, elaborate, or even completely re-interpret these remnants of fading memories. My paintings are created through collage and use of mixed media, adapting photocopies of photographs through a process that allows me complete freedom to alter things as I see fit. Each image creates it’s own unique decision making process.

www.paleypaint.blogspot.com

Neville Rae

2009-08-09T11:22:00.003+01:00

From: A Great Future Behind You, figures 1 - 17, 1960 - 2008

Biography

Neville Rae is based in Glasgow and is a studio holder at Clydebrae Studios, Govan. He graduated from Sculpture & Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art in 2006 and has exhibited work both nationally and internationally.

Artists Statement

I am interested in the history of post-war architecture in Scottish new towns, and the melancholy of a modernist tradition that never flourished. My research and work explore the fictional creations, places and public sculptures that transgress the imaginary border between art, architecture and landscape.

Erik Smith

2009-08-09T11:17:00.003+01:00

Otoboke Guzuta (Banana) 2009 (CONSTRUCTS, White House)

Artists Statement

I am interested in the liminal substance of living – the order of a visible world and the spirit in which its stuff becomes animated (or ‘useful’ or ‘meaningful’).

Absurd automatic drawing, snapshot photography and minimal diagrammatic notes of everyday conversations and events are important features of my personal sketchbook research. It follows that my work’s aesthetic maintains this sensibility of everyday pathos.

August 2009

Sam Stead

2009-08-09T11:08:00.002+01:00

Biography

Sam Stead is based in Glasgow and is a studio holder at Clydebrae Studios, Govan. He graduated from Sculpture & Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art in 2006 and has exhibited work across central Scotland and Northern England.

Artist Statement

Working with simple materials such as hardwoods, plywoods and various metals, I construct systems of objects that tend to be made up of smaller elemental units. My work is a formal exploration of modern lines that are compromised by their application; the industrial as interpreted by the individual.

Although my main concern is the making of objects, I also use drawing and rudimentary print techniques that inform and complement my sculptural activities.

www.secondhandspoon.co.uk

Sierra Stinson

2009-08-09T11:01:00.003+01:00

Native Produce, 2009

Biography

Based in Seattle and working primarily in photography and video, Sierra Stinson graduated from BA Fine Art : Photography & Video at Cornish College of the Arts (USA) in 2008. She spent her 3rd year on exchange studying on the Environmental Art course at Glasgow School of Art.

Artists Statement

My creations are situational gleanings.

www.sierrastinson.com

Ric Warren

2009-08-09T10:54:00.010+01:00

City Wall (Digital), 2009
City Limits (Florence, Edinburgh, Siena, Glasgow) 2009

Biography

Born in Barnsley (Yorkshire) Ric Warren is based in Glasgow and is a studio holder at Clydebrae Studios, Govan. He graduated form Environmental Art at Glasgow School of Art in 2008 and has exhibited both across the UK and within Europe. In 2008 he was awarded the Royal Scottish Academy's John Kinross Scholarship which enabled him to spend three months conducting research in Florence, Italy.

Artists Statement

My work is an exploration of the structures and materials that compose our manmade surroundings and I am particularly interested in architecture. I believe that urban structures have effects beyond their basic functions and I try to explore the symbolic meanings of these materials and forms. In addition to investigating conditions of contemporary urbanism, I am interested in the historical and hypothetical changes of our human habitat (physically, politically, culturally, socially and environmentally) as well as the everyday maintenance and progress of our built surroundings.

Spaces that are visually concealed or made physically inaccessible intrigue me and I try to explore these concerns within my work. Often exploring themes of exclusion, I am interested in structures that effect to conceal, edit, remove, obstruct, imprison, or deny access. I am also interested in distorting functionality by exploiting of the formal tradition of sculpture to occupy space rather than create it. Similar to my intentionally flawed ‘faux architectural’ drawings, my structures and models attempt to mimic the language of architecture, or intervene with it, to create structures that hold space but do not offer it.

ricwarren.blogspot.com