Alvaro Barrington and Oliver Beer in Vortic art exhibition Excavation: Macro to the Micro
Curated by Deborah Smith
Exhibition design by KHBT
Presented by Vortic in partnership with Art KOKO
12 September – 6 December 2024 | vortic.art
12 September – 19 September 2024 | House of KOKO
12 September 2024 | Preview: 6:30 - 8:30pm | House of KOKO
This exhibition is an excavation of overarching themes, the complexity of artistic practice and the interweaving and colliding of the past and present. It introduces different viewpoints of scale, culture, life, and art experiences.
Deborah Smith, Curator
Excavation: Macro to the Micro is a journey of exploration and discovery, from the broad and expansive to the detailed and intricate. The exhibition presents 22 artists, in five sections, with the starting point being large scale paintings – the macro – by Jenny Saville, Tim Stoner, Nigel Cooke, Alvaro Barrington and Pam Evelyn.
Nuanced layers of information or concepts within each of the paintings inspired the work – the micro – of the following artists on view: HelenA Pritchard, Oliver Beer, Renee So, Louise Giovanelli, Nicola Ellis, Leo Fitzmaurice, Anne Tallentire, Nnena Kalu, George Shaw, Isabelle Young, Alice Channer, James Collins, Tanoa Sasraku, Emii Alrai, Dawn Ng, Matt Bryans and Nina Chua.
Performers' bodies become vessels in Oliver Beer’s video Composition for Mouths (‘songs My Mother Taught Me) I&II, 2018. By joining their lips in a tight seal to create a single mouth cavity, childhood songs are transformed into an acoustic frequency, where the meeting point of the two voices resonate as a third voice.
Álvaro Barrington’s Compass Posse (Deanna), 2021 is part of a series of square canvases made with textiles, on which he draws silhouettes against an abstract background. The series reflects the cross-pollination of many influences, including culture, fashion, music and art history. His interest in materials extends to making custom-made cement frames, which convey a brutalist aspect and impart a sense of gravity to the paintings, connecting them with the idea of an urban landscape.
The exhibition continues on Vortic until 6 December 2024 | www.vortic.art
