Jonathan Callan, Hormazd Narielwalla, Carolyn Thompson
9 February – 17 March 2023
‘No poet, no artist of any art, has complete meaning alone.’ T.S. Eliot (1)
The English philosopher John Austin described language as a net we use to try to catch our experiences of the world. Words, punctuation, typographic and topographic symbols are amongst systems we use that enable us to communicate. However, meaning is not held completely fixed within the frameworks we impose and visual artists explore this sense of slippage in very interesting ways.
The current exhibition brings together three U.K. artists whose work could be described as a form re-reading. Their art investigates source material that contains different kinds of language, re-fashioning it into new forms and altering narratives.
Jonathan Callan is regarded internationally for conceptually-led works that are often derived from found books. As a visual artist he is pre-occupied by the limitations of language and his process involves a form of deconstruction. From large-scale installations that fix hundreds of books into abstract forms, to intimate small-scale sculptural objects, his work renders physical what might be considered abstract thought. He is represented in collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The British Museum, London; The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; The British Council; The West Collection, Pennsylvania; The Leopold Hörsch Museum Düren, Germany; Princeton University Art Museum, New York and JP Morgan Chase Bank, New York.
Hormazd Narielwalla is known for images that re-purpose long-discarded, vintage tailoring patterns which he overlays with imposed forms to express ideas about memory, identity and diaspora. With an early training in fashion, the Indian born artist, uses the printed templates to speak of the human body in order to ask questions about how we exist in the world. His work is currently featured in Queering Connections at the Winchester Gallery and is held in collections including the Ben Uri Society, the Hepworth Wakefield, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Yale Center for British Art.
‘Fear of the Flower’, a new artist’s book launched during the exhibition, celebrates queer male sexuality in a series of ‘rose-bud’ paintings that are reminiscent of Georgia O’Keeffe’s lush, sexualised blooms. The book is introduced with a text by Dr Michael Petry and explores the often hidden codes through which desire is indicated or expressed.
Carolyn Thompson’s practice incorporates altered texts, drawings, installations, textiles, sound works and film. Her working method is a form of subtle appropriation that re-writes and distills the essence of her source matter in eloquent new ways. Post Moderns, a solo exhibition held jointly by the Laurence Sterne Trust and the Eagle Gallery (2019-20), responded to 50 seminal modernist texts re-published by Penguin Classics in 2018. Works ranged from meticulously altered found books, digital prints, drawings, paper sculptures and type-written poems. A recent film project This, of course is all speculation (2022) blurs fact and fiction in a conjectured narrative about the lives of Thomas Wood a 19th century gilder and art trader from Darlington and his son Sydney H. Wood, a photographer. In 2021 she was the recipient of a Dover Prize award and is currently working on a book based on archival material for Matt’s Gallery. Her work is held in collections including the Laurence Sterne Trust, Linklaters and Penguin, London.
1. ’Tradition and Individual Talent’, publ. in the Egoist, 1919
Artist’s talk with Hormazd Narielwalla and Dr Michael Petry, Wednesday 1 March, 6.30 – 8.30pm
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