John Frankland, Untitled Brown Work, 2005 (installation view)
John Frankland, Untitled Brown Work, 2005 (installation view)
John Frankland, Untitled Brown Work, 2005 (installation view)
Neither a solo nor a group show, the works of Amikam Toren and John Frankland will hang in a shared space. Both artists have previously shown at Matt’s Gallery; Toren in 1981 and ’84, and Frankland in 1996 and ’99. Adapting a series of small spaces, Frankland and Toren will install works that characterize their individual concerns, yet share a relation to painting, and to the sculptural re-articulation of familiar representational forms.
This exhibition brings together Amikam Toren’s Memento Paintings and Clouds in Trousers and John Frankland’s Brown Works:
Memento Paintings are a group of miniatures (begun in 2001) evolved from Toren’s Armchair Paintings, which take a readymade ‘decorative’ painting as the material for the work. Memento Paintings discard all but the corner of a painting, retaining the painter’s signature. Toren exposes the fold of canvas that has been tucked to the side and back of the frame, and, attaching the canvas to a board, signs his name below the signature of the painter.
Hanging from the walls are paint-besmirched overalls-come-paintings, Clouds in Trousers. Made with common white boiler-suits, each has one trouser-leg split and stretched over a frame. Pictures are painted on these canvasses using oils, and the excess paint wiped on the remainder of the garment becomes part of the finished work. The Clouds in Trousers series pays homage to the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, after his long poem entitled Cloud in Pants (1913).
Amikam Toren has, since the 1970’s, been producing works that explore the relation between form and content, object and representation, and between the languages of sculpture and painting. Toren produces works through rituals of reduction (destruction) and re-construction, his practice exploring the extent to which the processes of making and consuming art can be compounded.
This is the first showing of pieces from John Frankland’s Brown Works series. The works, constructed from MDF and wood, take on the language of sculpture, but being wall hung and rectilinear allude also to painting. Brown Works reframe the notion of emptiness, each object capturing light to create different planes of texture and density within and without. Bowing under their own weight, the works undermine the authority of the frame as a device, their form determined by the point of tension that is created in their hanging upon the wall.
John Frankland’s sculptural works explore illusory surfaces, weightiness and weightlessness, often intervening with the architectural landscape to alter and create surfaces that disorient the viewer and challenge his/her perception. You Can’t Touch This (1993) and what you lookin’ at? (1996) employed large-scale wooden frames over which polythene was stretched as a taught skin, creating an illusion of solidity that belied the fragility of the material. Frankland’s current series Brown Works suggest the same delicacy and vulnerability as the polythene works, but without the taut, unified ‘surface’, the frame is revealed and remains.
Return to top
Biography
Born Rochdale, Lancashire 1961, Lives and works in London. Studied 1979
Rochdale College of Art (Foundation) 1980/3 Goldsmiths College (BA Hons) Selected
Solo Exhibitions 2006 Peer, Peer Gallery, London 2005
Brown Works, Matt's Gallery, London 2001
Untitled Boulder, Compton Verney House Trust, Warwick 2000
Untitled (Disaster), Project Art Centre, Dublin 1999
BACKSPACE Matt’s Gallery, London; You Can’t Touch This,
Arnolfini, Bristol 1998 Lokaal 01,
Antwerp 1997 Nothing Matters, Royal
Festival Hall, London 1996 what you lookin’
at?, Matt’s Gallery, London 1994
Untitled (shed), Hales Gallery, London 1993
You Can’t Touch This, Hales Gallery, London Group
Exhibitions 2007 A Proposal, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea; Art Futures, Contemporary Art Society at Bloomberg Space, London; Relationships, York Art Gallery, Yorkshire 2006 Designer DIY, curated by FAT, distributed by Volume Magazine, Amsterdam 2004 Off the Beaten Track, Arts Council Collection,
Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park; Full Bloom, The Harley
Gallery, Worksop 2003 In Good Form,
Arts Council Collection, Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park 2002
Art and Mountains, The Alpine Club, London 2001 Multiplication,
British Council Touring Show to: The National Gallery of Bucharest and touring:
Romania, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Turkey, to 2005 2000
Point of View, Part One, Richard Salmon Gallery, London; Multiple
showcase, Camden Arts Centre, London; Tabley, Tabley House, Cheshire,
curated by Mike Stanley 1999 Signs of Life,
Melbourne International Biennial, Australia, curated by Juliana Engberg; Anarchitecture,
De Appel, Amsterdam; ninenineninetynine, Anthony Wilkinson Gallery,
London; Manufacturers, The Paper Bag Factory, London 1998
Martin Creed, Ceal Floyer, John Frankland, Delfina, London; Close Echoes,
Gallery of the City of Prague, Prague, Czech Republic, Curated by Olga Mala,
Wolfgang Denk & Karel Srp; New Art from Britain, Kunstraum Innsbruck,
Austria 1997 Belladonna, ICA, London;
Pictura Britannica, curated by Bernice Murphy, Museum of Contemporary
Art, Sydney; & touring to Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide &
Te Papa, Wellington New Zealand 1996/7 Plastic,
Arnolfini, Bristol 1996 Two Seconds Nine
Months, Bankside Lofts, London; Roadworks, curated by FAT, London
1995 Tell Everyone, Greene Naftali
Gallery, New York; To Whom It May Concern, Anna Bornholt Gallery, London;
Konrad Lorenz’s Duck, Ex Lanficio Bona, Turin; Young British
Artists IV, Saatchi Gallery, London 1995
The British Art Show 4 organised by National Touring Exhibitions at
the Hayward Gallery; & touring to Manchester, Edinburgh & Cardiff (1996)
1994 Tight, The Tannery, London Bridge
Extension, Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University 1992
Whitechapel Open at Spitalfields Market, London 1991
Open Studio Show, Victor House, London; Ersatz, group show
of installations at Martello Street, London 1987
London Fields Artists (Open studio show) Collections
Private collections in London and Sweden; Arts Council Collection, Hayward Gallery,
London; The British Council Collection, London; Saatchi Collection, London;
You Can’t Touch This was permanently installed at the Saatchi
Gallery, London, 1995-7 Awards 2002
The Arts Foundation Award for Sculpture Teaching
2002 Lecturer, MA Sculpture, Royal College of
Arts 1998 - 2001 Head of Sculpture, City &
Guilds of London School of Art (BA and MA courses) 1995-8
University of Portsmouth BA Course; Visiting Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan
University MA Course; Slade School of Art MA Course; Winchester School of Art
BA Sculpture; University of Brighton; University of Wales, Cardiff BA and MA
Courses; Byam Shaw School of Art, London BA Sculpture; Reading University BA
Fine Art; Goldsmiths College, London MA Course; Nene College, Northampton BA
Fine Art; Central St Martins College of Art and Design, London MA Course; Fine
Art, Royal Academy, London; Ruskin School, Oxford University BA Sculpture; University
of Central England BA Fine Art
Bibliography
2007 Ben Tufnell, Land Art, Tate Publishing 2006Sally O'Reilly Peer, Time Out; The Guardian, 5 best shows, June 2002 Ben Tufnell, Art and Mountains, Contemporary 2001 Maev Kennedy, Rock On, The Guardian,
19 July; Duncan McLaren, You Can Touch This, Art Review, July/ Aug;
Duncan McLaren, Ancestral Voices, Contemporary Visual Arts, Issue 32
2000 Isobel Johnstone, The Saatchi Gift
to the Arts Council Collection, Hayward Gallery Publishing [catalogue];
Valerie Connor, Untitled (Disaster), Project Arts Space, Dublin [leaflet]
1999 Juliana Engberg, Signs of Life,
Melbourne International Biennial, Australia [catalogue]; The Guide, Guardian,
31 July - 6 August; John Meade, Building the Biennial, LIKE, Art Magazine
No.9 (August) 1998 Mark Currah, Time Out, February
18-25; David Green, Minimal Interventions, Contemporary Visual Arts,
Issue 17; Roy Exley, Tending the Abyss, Contemporary Visual Arts, Issue
19; Sophie Berrebi, Alternative Spaces, Art Press, No. 235, May; E.
Schlocker, Frischer insularer Wind, Tiroler Tageszeitung, No. 146,
27/28 June; David Bussel, Close Echoes, Gallery of the City of Prague,
Kunsthalle Krems [catalogue]; Clarrie Rudrum, New Art from Britain,
Kunstraum Innsbruck [catalogue] 1997 Rosanna
Negrotti, What’s On, October 8 - 15; William Feaver, The Observer, 5 October;
Martin Coomer, Time Out, September 17-24; Nothing Matters, Royal Festival
Hall [catalogue]; Bernice Murphy, Pictura Britannica, Museum of Contemporary
Art, Sydney [catalogue]; 1996 British Art
Show 4, National Touring Exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, London [catalogue];
Philip Sanderson, Art Monthly, No.197, June; Evening Standard, Hot Tickets,
June 4; Claire Price, Building Design, No. 1226 , May 24; Mark Currah, Time
Out, May 22 - 29; Sacha Craddock, The Times, May 21; Richard Shone, Burlington
Magazine, vol. CXXXVIII, No.1120, July; Rosanna Negrotti, What’s On, May
15 - 22; the architect’s journal, May 16; Roadworks, FAT [catalogue];
1995 Sarah Kent, Shark Infested Waters,
Young British Artists, Saatchi Collection [catalogue]; Richard Dorment, Could
this be the real thing? The Daily Telegraph, April 5; Adrian Searle, The
Saturday Independent (April); Sarah Kent, Time Out (April); Richard Cork, Sinister
twist to the everyday, The Times, April 11; James Hall, The Guardian (April);
William Feaver, The Observer (April); Kaleidoscope, BBC Radio 4 (April);
1994 Geraldine Norman, The Independent (March); David Lillington, Time Out (March);
Kevin Rhowbotham, Surface 1993 Adrian
Searle, You Can’t Touch This, Time Out January 27; Paul Hedge,
You Can’t Touch This