TRANSIT_2

RICHARD CLEGG, MAX DEWDNEY, AISLING HEDGECOCK, TONY LLOYD,
CLARA URSITTI, JOHN WALTER, STEPHEN WILSON

Opening: Thursday, 15th March 2007, 6.30-9.30 PM
16-24 March 2007, Monday-Saturday, 4.30-7.00 PM and by appointment

The British School at Rome
via Gramsci 61, 00197 Roma
tel. 06 3264939
<ww.bsr.ac.uk>

Transit_2 is the second of three exhibitions in the British School at Rome Fine Arts programme for 2006-2007. The title for the three exhibitions refers to the transitory nature of the artists’ and architect’s stay in Rome and to the temporary nature of their residence at the British School. The exhibition, coordinated by Jacopo Benci, is comprised of the works of six artists (Richard Clegg, Aisling Hedgecock, Tony Lloyd, Clara Ursitti, John Walter, Stephen Wilson) and one architect (Max Dewdney).

Richard Clegg

“During his stay in Rome he has been considering the installational possibilities of the Luneur Park in EUR and other sensorial architectural sites. The work utilises a frame work of languages that include Blackboard paintings that translate images into an educational syntax, to paintings on antique mirrors that have the reflection destroyed and scrubbed out, referencing a more dysphasia-like state, a type of historical amnesia.” [Richard Clegg]

Richard Clegg (Abbey Fellow in Painting, January-March 2007) grew up in Blackpool and graduated from the Royal College of Art, London. His art takes many different forms of expression including painting, drawing, installation, and sculpture. He has exhibited in the US and Europe, which include museum shows in Germany and England, and is currently in an exhibition at the Contemporary Gallery at the National Glass Centre, Sunderland. Richard has been interviewed on Swedish and English television featuring his work and recently featured in articles in The Times, Independent, Guardian and Observer.

Max Dewdney

“Museum of the Shadow. Studies (1-4) No-Stop Monument Project, 2007. No-Stop Monument project draws on the model ‘No-Stop City’, a critique of the Modernist city plan by Archizoom Associati 1970. No-Stop Monument is presented at half the scale of the original model, the mirror used is shaded instead of the original clear mirror used in No-Stop City and therefore does not reflect infinitely. The scaled city of the original model is replaced with an interior, showing fragments of rooms, courtyards and a monument. This work attempts to move from the transparent to the obscure and from the public to the private in wishing to navigate the psychological dimensions of space. The Museum is an experimental collection, started in 1748 with the creation of Giovanni Battista Nolli’s seminal Map of Rome. The current show is part of a larger exploration into changes in the perception of public and private space. The Museum is sited in the context of Rome and works with the idea of shadow as a duality of presence and absence.” [Max Dewdney]

Max Dewdney (Rome Scholar in Architecture, October 2006-June 2007) lives & works in London. His recent exhibitions include, Incomplete House Project, Dilston Grove, CGP, London, Centrifuge, Tannery Arts, Drawing Rooms, London, & 2015, Modern Art Oxford and has exhibited in Italy, New York & Berlin. He is a founding member of The Mobile Studio (www.themobilestudio.co.uk) whose latest project will be exhibited in Swiss Cottage Gallery as part of architecture week. Its most recent project was published in Blueprint (April) 2007.

Aisling Hedgecock

«More recent works include sculptural objects centring upon the phenomena of the everyday, the alchemy of packaging materials; polystyrene beads cardboard, glue. The large-scale work Saracen (2006) references a medieval colloquialism of the ‘sarsen’ stone. Pre-history monoliths looming on the plains of South West England were considered suspicious interlopers by the human inhabitants of the landscape. These sculptures exist in a bizarre state of paradox. The nature of the everyday material is occupied in the absurdist abundance between the rationale of permanence and temporality, of neither flesh nor stone. The physical nature of the sculptures instinctively arouses a sense of fragmentation, not dissimilar to a diver entering a pool of water, another world. This process is further illuminated in imaginary drawings of coral-like vestiges. In this respect the practice of drawing alludes to uncharted and untold spaces.» [Aisling Hedgecock]

Aisling Hedgecock (Sainsbury Scholar in Drawing & Sculpture, October 2006-September 2007) graduated from the Royal College of Art earlier this year. Since leaving Wimbledon School of Art in 2001 she has exhibited in the UK, and Europe. She was short listed for the Pizza Express Drawing prize in 2003, and received a Mann Drawing Prize in 2006. Recent exhibitions include, Saudade, Highbury Studios, London; Transiti, Æmilia Hotel Spazio Cultura, Bologna; Transit_1, The British School at Rome (2006); Gabriel Rolt Gallery, Amsterdam (2007), air guitar & two teaspoons, Bischoff Weiss, London. Hedgecock was recently nominated by The Independent as outstanding young artist for their ‘Talent 2007’ issue.

Clara Ursitti

“Helen Keller once said that smell is the fallen angel of the senses. Over the past 12 years, my practice has focused on the non-visual sense of smell. I have a body of work where there is little to look at in my installations, apart from a title, and the architectural space that houses the scent. I disperse the fragrance electronically, and often work with biochemist George Dodd to create the formulas. I have worked with animal and body smells, through creating self portraits in scent, and also through using the smells of human and animal sexuality. I also have an ongoing project called Pheromone LinkTM, an experimental dating agency where you choose your partner through the way they smell, playfully asking the question: “Is love a matter of chemistry?” I am very interested in questions surrounding what it means to be human, and how our can senses figure in this. There is no language for smell, and consequently we describe odours using metaphors or crude dichotomies of good and bad. I am curious about what these dichotomies exclude and how they point to dominant social norms and ideologies. Smell is unique in that it is the only sense we have that has direct links to the oldest part of the brain, where memories and emotions are thought to be stored. It is a highly evocative and underrated sense that we still we know very little about.” [Clara Ursitti]

Clara Ursitti (Arts Council England Helen Chadwick Fellow, September 2006, January-March 2007) Education: 1992, BFA, York University, Toronto, Canada: 1995, MFA Glasgow School of Art, Scotland. Selected recent exhibitions: 2005, Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland; Alice Day Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; 2004, Vilma Gold Gallery, London, England; Galleri 54, Gothenburg, Sweden; 2003, Karen Schreiber Gallery, Toronto; Vane, Newcastle, England; Ibid Projects, London, England, and Vilnius, Lithuania; Chapter, Cardiff, Wales; 2002, Montevideo: The Netherlands Media Institute, Amsterdam; Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London, England; Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand; 2001, Gothenburg International Biennial, Konsthallen, Gothenburg, Sweden; YYZ Gallery, Toronto, Canada; Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia; Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland; 2000, Camac, Marnay, France; Turku Museum, Turku, Finland; Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; Lugar Comun, Lisbon, Portugal.

John Walter

“Recent work addresses Post-Modernism and New York painting from the 1980's through the lens of being in Rome. Visions of Dante-esque hell and advertising imagery become the fodder for contemporary metaphysical paintings.” [John Walter]

John Walter studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University, and the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London. Recent exhibitions include the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2005, Queer Eye, University of Massachusetts, Boston (2006), The Risky Business of Import/Export, The Tank, New York (2005). He has a solo show at Galleria Marabini, Bologna, opening in May 2007.

Stephen Wilson

«Over the past five years I have produced artwork and writings that show a preoccupation with significant works of literature and subsequently an ongoing relationship to visual culture. A central concern lies in the historical anxiety and non-sequential reading that is often conveyed through painting, film and illustration. In numerous works I have drawn distinctions between the literary structure and where a visual parallel occupies the compositional framework between text and image processes. In this new work, ‘Posthumous Hang’ encourages a suspension between a popular perception towards the modernist discourse held within history painting - addressing where painting and writing collide, as well as how fact and fiction converge.» [Stephen Wilson]

Stephen Wilson (Abbey Scholar in Painting, October 2006-June 2007) lives and works in London. Higher education: 2002-07, PhD by Project (Carlo Collodi’s ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ represented in visual culture and the art of Macchiaioli in mid-19th-century Risorgimento Italy), Royal College of Art, London. 1999-2001, MA Fine Art, Royal College of Art, London.1995-1999, BA Fine Art, Gerrit Rietveld Akademie, Amsterdam. Selected recent exhibitions include: 2006, Monstrous Tales, APT Gallery, London (Three Sons, interactive collaborative performative); Fortnight of Solo Shows, Ben Uri Gallery, London (Three Sons, interactive collaborative performative); Transiti, Æmilia Hotel Spazio Cultura, Bologna; Transit_1, The British School at Rome.