CORE PURPOSE Group Show

CORE PURPOSE is an encounter among different generations of artists, researches and genres.

The exhibition displays different mediums, from painting, to photography, sculptures and light installations, and presents works by Richard Caldicott (b. 1962), Bill Culbert (b. 1935), Peter Lamb (b. 1973), Peter Lowe (b. 1938), Andrea Medjesi-Jones (b. 1973), Peter Sedgley (b. 1930) and Michael Stubbs (b. 1961).

Bill Culbert, Sunrise, 1989, colour photographic print, 100 x 150 cm

New Zealander Bill Culbert‘s solo exhibition Front Door Out Back has been reviewed as one of the best Pavilions of the Venice Biennale 2013. The artist has been recently interviewed about his work, and in this occasion he talks about the lightness of his ready-made installations, the surprise in discovering and changing an old and magical space as church of the Instituto Santa Maria della Pietà in Venice. “I probably like surprising myself”, he proclaims in the video interview, produced by Biennale Arte 2013.

In order to represent Culbert’s interdisciplinary approach to visual arts, CORE PURPOSE displays three light installations and one colour photographic print.

Bill Culbert, Total Black, 1991, plastic bottles, fluorescent tube, 122 x 122 cm

Surprising is also the work of young artists Andrea Medjesi-Jones and Peter Lamb: an explosion of colours, nuances and broken lines. Medjesi-Jones is currently part of the Exchange Project group exhibition at the APT Gallery in Depford, showing her work in the section “Obscured Exchange”. On the other side, Lamb has shown his new oversize diptych painting in the just concluded group exhibition London Utd., at the Kling and Bang Gallery in Iceland.

Andrea Medjesi-Jones, Shut your mouth (Gudrun), 2013, Acrylic, aluminium powder and pigment on linen, 60cm x 50 cm

Peter Lamb, Ice leaning forwards and Falling Rock Purple Smoke, 2013, installation view. Courtesy the Artist and Kling&Bang Gallery

Peter Lamb, Puffy Brain on Mountain, 2012, photograph, acrylic, powder and spray paint, 280 x 190 cm

The works by Peter Lowe, Peter Sedgley and Richard Caldicott play with viewers’s perception.  Lowe began deepening the concepts of time, space and mathematical relations in visual art after joining the British System Group in 1969; CORE PURPOSE presents two rare wood and perspex reliefs of that time, Permutation of Rows (1968) and 9 Groups of 4 Squares (1969).

Peter Lowe, Permutations of Rows, 1968, black and white perspex on wood, 25 x 25 cm

Sedgley is one of British best-known  optical artists and one of the founder members (with Bridget Riley) of SPACE, Provision Artist Cultural Educational (London, 1968); since his first works in the mid-1960s, he has been celebrated for his vibrant paintings, tempera and installations. Vibrations (1984) is a key work in his kinetics production of the 1980s. 

Peter Sedgley, Vibrations, 1984, work on paper, 50 x 60 cm. Detail

Caldicott’s drawing series, Untitled (2012) and photograph Untitled#68 (1999), reflect the artist’s long term interest in Minimalist aesthetics. The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona has recently included some of its envelope drawings (2011-2013) in his permanent collection.

Richard Caldicott, Untitled, 2012, mixed media on coloured paper, 21 x 29 cm

Richard Caldicott, Untitled#68, 1999, photograph, 107 x 137 cm

After his solo show at CAAS Gallery in London (2013), Michael Stubbs presents two recent mixed media abstract works, Repeater (2010) and Ef Ex Head #1 (2006-2012).  These works are constructed by combining abstract configurations of transparent varnishes and opaque household paints, and play between material manipulation, three-dimensionality and physical space.

“When I use transparent areas created with floor varnish (pointing to the painting above where we are seated), I’m pouring them like he would have done. But I’m using a non-art material, a builder’s material. This staining or transparency refers to Morris Louis’ experiments but, in a sense, mimics them in non-art materials. “, Stubbs discusses with the critic John Bunker, in his recent interview on Abstract Critical.

Michael Stubbs, Repeater, 2010, household paint and tinted floor varnish on MDF, 122×122 cm

Laurent Delaye Gallery programme works on a constant dialogue between earlier figures of the avant-garde, artists born in the 1930’s, and the younger generations: in this sense, CORE PURPOSE reflects on and investigates the identity of the gallery itself.

The exhibition will run until the 5th October, 2013. More information available at laurentdelaye.com

Michael Stubbs, ‘Ef Ex Head #1’, 2012, household paint and tinted floor varnish on mdf, 50 x 40 cm