Sorcha Dallas

Press Release- The Owl of Minerva

Being everyday is no easy task. The works in this show unravel and repackage the stuff of normal life to create new forms.

Minerva, the Roman Goddess of Wisdom, in addition to her main role was associated with craft. The works exhibited are linked through a common compulsion to make as well as through a particular desire to understand reality through physical forms.

Alex Frost’s Everyday 2004 typifies this analysis of things. Taking the dimensions from a packet of Ryvita, he has fashioned wooden blocks that are stacked to form a common-or-garden brick barbecue. Each Ryvita brick has been carefully re-packaged in hand printed wrappings based on the original. Frost’s Untitled (studios spill) 2003 likewise takes the everyday occurrence of a spillage in his studio as an opportunity to investigate a familiar form. Again his process is meticulous as he pencils in graph paper to imitate the haphazard.

Jack Newling appropriates the graphic CMYK colour strips from cereal packets and other consumer goods to meticulously hand print them then carefully throw them away Untitled (bins) 2005). Untitled (Evian) 2005 is comprised of a printed landscape of Evian logos on a base-board of corrugated cardboard that leans against the wall as if ready to be carted off.

When I grow strong I’m gonna kick your ass 2005, is a new work by Kieran Brown. The piece towers above the other works in the show as its precarious mass of inflated vehicle inner tubes struggles to hold itself together. Imbues with a sense of misguided arrogance the work wrestles between totemic proportions and potential deflation.

Tim Machin’s always-discrete objects make use of the smallest sculptural gesture to manipulate our perception of the world around us and our place within it. Mountains 2003 is a corner torn out of the Guardian stock market report. Each graph is carefully sluiced and folded upright to form a miniature range of mountains.* Plastic Bag* 2004 reveals another hidden geographic feature by removing reindeer from a Christmas bag.

The exhibition is curated by Sally Shaw who graduated from the MA Curating at Goldsmiths in 2004. Sally is currently director of the Media Art Bath and on of the five founders of LOT in Bristol. Sally has recently been awarded a curatorial research bursary from UCE, Birmingham. Kieran Brown was shown in Long Live Romance at Galleria Pack, Milan this autumn and graduated from Wimbledon School of Art and Design in 2001. Alex Frost was featured in the Sculpture Pack at Frieze Art Fair this year with Maverick 2005; he graduated from Glasgow School of Art and Design in 1998 and is represented by Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow. Tim Machin has been awarded a solo show at Aspex Gallery Portsmouth in 2006 as part of the Emergency 2 exhibition currently showing at Aspex. He graduated from the Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford in 1999 and Wimbledon School of Art in 2002. Jack Newling graduated from the University of West of England in 2005 and has recently shown at LOT in Bristol. December 8 2005- January 14 2006 Private View Wednesday December 7th, 7-9pm