Lydia Gifford
12 Feb - 26 Mar 2011
LYDIA GIFFORD
Its Hurtling Gold
12 February - 26 March, 2011
Laura Bartlett Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Its Hurtling Gold, a solo exhibition by British artist Lydia Gifford (b.1979). This will be her second solo exhibition at the gallery.
“Varying degrees of presence lead to different strengths of voice, tensions. The intimate is measured and restrained. A library of nuance is taken from a private studio activity, to a public site, a public moment. Halfway objects provide a starting point. Things come into being in their very utterance, emerging through the telling. I question which of my actions ‘hold’ their own, what can stay. Some insist, some withdraw. The work sits on the boundary of completion, where tenses co-exist.” -Lydia Gifford, 2011
The exhibition will consist of a series of six new wall based works. Boards covered in cotton are for the most part entirely bare. They are off shapes, and often off kilter. The boards have been left to their own devices picking up marks, scratches, and stains. Any blemish appears as just that, but is claimed and invited. Allied to these passive, patient open surfaces are smaller painted boards, or marks applied directly to the wall. Acting as punctuation points, some are heavily, turbulently painted, others fleeting. They propose depths or pressure. They act as markers anchoring the open surfaces, pinning them to an in between state of painting and sculpture. On My Timing, 2011, the thick yellow paint stems off of the board and directly onto the wall, while the board acts as a supporting shelf.
Gifford’s work grows out from an activity of application, removal, insertion, incision, placement and replacement. There is a fine balance between impulse and action, implicit is a tension. Citing the films of Béla Tarr, attributes of pace, pause and pursuit course through Gifford’s work. In this new series of works, Gifford employs a structure of wall based ‘open’ canvases from which to communicate an attitude to painting, a handling of paint broken down into sculptural decisions but nevertheless shifting between object, drawing, painting and performance.
Lydia Gifford (b.1979, U.K) lives and works in London. Gifford graduated from the Royal College of Art (MA Painting) in 2008. Recent exhibitions include: Lydia Gifford, Brackets,a solo exhibition at Marcelle Alix, Paris,and group exhibitions Session_9_Object, Am Nuden Da, London, Lydia Gifford, Manuela Leinhoß, Laura Riboli, Laura Bartlett Gallery, Taj Mahal Travellers, Gallery Nordenhake, Stockholm,Moon Star Love, Marcelle Alix, Paris, About, Auto Italia South, London, Curated by Zayne Armstrong. Gifford will exhibit at Art Statements, Art Basel 42, Basel in June, 2011.
Its Hurtling Gold
12 February - 26 March, 2011
Laura Bartlett Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Its Hurtling Gold, a solo exhibition by British artist Lydia Gifford (b.1979). This will be her second solo exhibition at the gallery.
“Varying degrees of presence lead to different strengths of voice, tensions. The intimate is measured and restrained. A library of nuance is taken from a private studio activity, to a public site, a public moment. Halfway objects provide a starting point. Things come into being in their very utterance, emerging through the telling. I question which of my actions ‘hold’ their own, what can stay. Some insist, some withdraw. The work sits on the boundary of completion, where tenses co-exist.” -Lydia Gifford, 2011
The exhibition will consist of a series of six new wall based works. Boards covered in cotton are for the most part entirely bare. They are off shapes, and often off kilter. The boards have been left to their own devices picking up marks, scratches, and stains. Any blemish appears as just that, but is claimed and invited. Allied to these passive, patient open surfaces are smaller painted boards, or marks applied directly to the wall. Acting as punctuation points, some are heavily, turbulently painted, others fleeting. They propose depths or pressure. They act as markers anchoring the open surfaces, pinning them to an in between state of painting and sculpture. On My Timing, 2011, the thick yellow paint stems off of the board and directly onto the wall, while the board acts as a supporting shelf.
Gifford’s work grows out from an activity of application, removal, insertion, incision, placement and replacement. There is a fine balance between impulse and action, implicit is a tension. Citing the films of Béla Tarr, attributes of pace, pause and pursuit course through Gifford’s work. In this new series of works, Gifford employs a structure of wall based ‘open’ canvases from which to communicate an attitude to painting, a handling of paint broken down into sculptural decisions but nevertheless shifting between object, drawing, painting and performance.
Lydia Gifford (b.1979, U.K) lives and works in London. Gifford graduated from the Royal College of Art (MA Painting) in 2008. Recent exhibitions include: Lydia Gifford, Brackets,a solo exhibition at Marcelle Alix, Paris,and group exhibitions Session_9_Object, Am Nuden Da, London, Lydia Gifford, Manuela Leinhoß, Laura Riboli, Laura Bartlett Gallery, Taj Mahal Travellers, Gallery Nordenhake, Stockholm,Moon Star Love, Marcelle Alix, Paris, About, Auto Italia South, London, Curated by Zayne Armstrong. Gifford will exhibit at Art Statements, Art Basel 42, Basel in June, 2011.