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New Art Highlights

4 - 10 October 2021

New Art Highlights of the week includes: Martin, James William Murray, Caroline Watson and Hayley Field.


Invigilating @ The Needs Gone Gift Shop, 11th October 2021 - 24th December 2021 by Martin

Martin

Roll up, roll up, to The Needs Gone Gift Shop (2021). A shop like no other, nothing is for sale (NFS). This site-specific installation, the conclusion of a twenty-one-year aesthetic endeavour, is inspired by Berlin’s Museum Der Dinge (The Museum Of Things) whose Modus Operandi is Open Storage. These ready-made materials, multiples of the same, illustrate an overlap between similar, shared behaviours (shopping consuming collecting) and demonstrates how repetition creates patterns, analogue to algorithms, that can become art. Hamblen considers collecting to be a vestigial behaviour: what was once Hunting and Gathering now manifests as kinds of consuming, on a continuum. At one end of the spectrum is Thorstein Veblen's Conspicuous Consumption (“the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services to publicly display the economic power of the income or of the accumulated wealth of the buyer”). At the other end is Marshall Sahlin’s original affluent society: “Instead of continuously increasing production and maximising output, the main strategy of hunter-gatherers is to accept low production goals and optimise the distribution and use of resources...Instead of seeking to maximise individual material gains, many hunter-gatherers seemed to focus on allowing for plenty of time for leisure, ritual, social relations, and entertainment. Social practices such as sharing and mobility allowed greater access to resources than amongst sedentary people with exclusive property regimes.” The contents of The Needs Gone reflects a specific approach to creativity that harnesses hunter-gatherers environmentally sustainable affluence. Sir Nicholas Serota has stated his belief that “…we often neglect the achievements of living artists. This deprives audiences of the opportunity to have regular encounters with the art of their own time…” This up to 84-day event will create the conspicuous conditions for daily encounters between artist, audience and the art of our own time. 

See Martin's profile on Axis >


Fist With Sovereign, 2021 by James William Murray

James William Murray

Fist with Sovereign, 2021, plaster, linseed oil, 11 x 6 x 14 cm

See James' profile on Axis >


Pink Death, 2021 by Caroline Watson

Caroline Watson

A small portrait of a Punch and Judy death puppet.

See Caroline's profile on Axis >


Workout preview, 16th October 2021 - 24th October 2021 by Hayley Field

Hayley Field

The last year and a half has been a ‘Workout’ for many: working out the significance of the pandemic, dealing with instability or loss, finding fresh ways of discovering and advancing forward, when the world seems to have stopped moving intermittently. The pandemic has seen us lose the sense of our usual coordinates for a period of time, only to place ourselves on to a new trajectory. A majority have drifted off into their unique psychological spaces and explored new places (real or imaginary).


The artists in this exhibition present their creative ‘Workout’ for you in the Asylum Studios Gallery space, Ipswich. During unprecedented times, their artworks demonstrate how each artist has been working out their own practice and maybe some individual and/or world mysteries too.


The exhibiting artists are: Amanda Ansell, Claudia Boese, Karen Densham, Hayley Field, Joanna Whittle, and Hannah Wright.

See Hayley's profile on Axis >


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