Press

Clare Stephenson

WASTE MATERIAL London

Dinosaurs, insects and biomorphic forms inhabit this strange and quixotic exhibition that unites contemporary artists David Musgrave, Hannah Greeley, Elizabeth Kent, Rupert Norfolk, William Daniels and Clare Stephenson with the 19th century artist Georg Scharf and the surrealist painter Yves Tanguy. Scharf’s lithograph of prehistoric animals – beasts feeding on the carcasses of others – was the first attempt to visualise the Jurassic world through Darwin’s findings. This is complimented by the drawings of Yves Tanguy, who conjured up landscapes populated by abstract shapes that once appeared to be living but now turned to stone. Both Scharf and Tanguy attempted to depict a world without humanity, and the works of the contemporary artists, from Hannah Greeley’s papier mache step-ladder reclaimed by tiny insects to Clare Stephenson’s drawings constructed from history books and art references, aim to do the same.