Kate- feature in Time Out

the Assistant appears in Time Out this week...


photo by Helen Sumpter - Courtesy of Time Out

Check out the current In The Studio column in Time Out this week for an interview with Assistant artist Kate Pickering...

the Assistant Part 1 is being installed

Kate is here at Bearspace today, busy installing her work ready for the opening of the Assistant - Part 1. Blue also popped in today to check out the space again and take a few pictures to help him in planning his install which will be happening in a couple of weeks time. Kate's show however is now not far away at all, the work she will be showing is a video piece comprised of various fragments of text and images I believe and she is busy blocking out the light into the gallery in order to project the work onto the back wall. She has also just installed a section of text as vinyl lettering in the front window. I haven't seen the work myself yet and look forward to seeing what she has come up with. There is still much more installing to go but I'm sure it will all be ready for Friday, I hope that you can come down and join us from 7-9pm, this Friday, 14th May at Bearspace on Deptford High Street.

Interview with Assistant Artist Kate Pickering

Rules received for the Assistant 1

Earlier this morning I received an email from Maria Fusco. Within it was contained the initial set of instructions from her to Kate Pickering for Kate to respond to in the creation of the first part of the Assistant exhibition. It exciting to finally have the set of rules in front of us after all the time spent planning, this in where the exhibition begins to make the leap from concept to reality. Kate has now received the rules as well and now has one month to create an exhibition that will open at BEARSPACE on May 14th. It will be fascinating to see what she comes up with. The rules/instructions that Maria has set out for Kate are intriguing and reflect interestingly on the practice of both herself and Kate I feel. What I find particularly interesting is the fact that Kate is an artist that often works with text, the challenge of responding to a text therefore complicates her usual practice as it seems to ask what an artwork can add to the form of the expression already set out in the piece of text provided? For me, her challenge is what she can bring to this over and above what it already constitutes, it will be fascinating to see how she responds to this challenge. The rules are as follows:

Maria Fusco to Kate Pickering - Artist director to Assistant

The Assistant Exhibition
Instructions for Kate Pickering from Maria Fusco

1. Acquire a copy of David Foster Wallace’s book of short
stories Oblivion.
2. Select three stories and read them over three
consecutive days, beginning on a Monday (note they
vary quite radically in length).
3. Do nothing related to this project for four days.
4. On the next Monday, select just one of the stories
that you feel has most potential as a tool for
investigation.
5. Make one piece of work, each day, for each page of the
story you have selected. You are free to choose the
form and content of this.
6. Re-order the works you have made into a sequence which
‘works with’ the original story in a way that you
consider to address temporal space.
7. Exhibit it.

Artists Announced!

The Artists have been confirmed for the forthcoming exhibition at Bearspace, Deptford the Assistant. The exhibition will open in May but is being documented here in the run up to the show, examining the process of negotiation that goes into its production. It will explore the relationship of those artists designated 'Assistant' to the sets of instructions that they receive from their more established colleagues.

The artists have been confirmed as follows:

Artists Creating Work

Emerging Artist 1:

Kate Pickering

Kate Pickering is a London based artist and recently completed her MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College. Recent exhibitions include WORDS at Am Nuden Da and The Devil’s Necktie at Woodmill studios, and has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Bloc space in Sheffield. Her work addresses the beliefs and disbelief she encounters within the ‘post-ideological’ world of contemporary art. Her interest is in how the language of religion might be confused with the language of art in order to both examine and undo art world norms and assumptions. Texts appropriated from various religious sources are projected or performed, in order to mesmerise or confront the viewer.

Emerging Artist 2:

Blue Curry

Blue Curry was born in Nassau, the Bahamas. He trained as a photographer at the University of Westminster before completing his MFA at Goldsmiths in 2009. He currently lives and works in London. His exhibitions include works at Art Basel, Miami, Poortgebouw, Rotterdam, the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas and Photographers' Gallery, London, he has work in the collections of the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas and in private collections in the UK, America and the Caribbean. His works mainly fall into the category of installation.

Artists Setting Instructions

Established Artist 1:

Maria Fusco

image: benedictjohnson.com

Maria Fusco is a writer, editor and academic based in London. Born in Belfast, she contributes to a broad range of international publications, is Director of Art Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and is the founder/editor of “The Happy Hypocrite”, a journal for and about experimental art writing. In 2009 she was the Critic-in-Residence at Kadist Art Foundation, Paris and in 2009-10 the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Whitechapel Gallery, London. A book of her short stories published by Sternberg Press is forthcoming later in 2010.

'Maria is creating a vanguard in the relationship between language and
 visual arts that is undoubtedly of significance, and suffused with
 humour, absurdity and a serious playfulness.' - Kit Hammonds, freelance
 curator and tutor, Curating Department, Royal College of Art, London.

Established Artist 2:

Gordon Cheung

Gordon Cheung is of Hong Kong origin and born in London 1975 where he lives and works. Cheung’s multi-media art capture the hallucinations between the virtual and actual realities of a globalised world oscillating between Utopia and Dystopia. Spray paint, oil, acrylic, pastels, stock listings and ink collide in his works to form epic techno-sublime vistas. He exhibits internationally and was in the largest and most ambitious survey of recent developments in art from the UK; The British Art Show 6 and The John Moores Painting 24. He was commissioned for a Laing Art Solo Award (Selected by Susan May) July 2007. 2009 solo shows include 'The Promised Land', Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, 'Art in the Age of Anxiety' Volta NYC, New York and 'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse', The New Art Gallery Walsall UK. Forthcoming is Cheung's first US solo museum exhibition at the Arizona State University Art Museum in 2010.

Cheung's works are in international collections including the Hirshhorn Museum, Whitworth Museum, ASU Art Museum, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Hiscox Collection, Progressive Arts Collection, UBS Collection and the Gottesman Collection.