DAISY ADDISON
ADAM KING
REBECCA STEVENSON

Podium & Pandemonium

22 JANUARY - 21 FEBRUARY 2010


VIEW WORK


Whether it’s a date on the calendar or the name of a very Disney-esque American town which promises you “special events, always planning something for you”; the evocation of a “celebration” often leads to a ceremonial, as essential as it is useless, and aspires to sacralizing the unforgettable. Generating a sense of excitation and spirit of greatness, the act of celebration invites the suspension of time, leading inexorably to brief retrospective impulses inspired by feelings of accomplishment, pride, nostalgia and other excesses of happiness.
Podium & Pandemonium aims to emphasize ideas of recognition and observance through corrupted objects; with works evoking a certain symbolism linked to the notion of consecration. The works presented will explore certain feelings induced by the recollection or identification of moments in our archaeology of life, of a community beyond individual memory.
Although addressing the idea of the fugacity of life, the exhibition will present different practices led by a common interest in the notion of desire and its failures, this state of grace which leads the object of all desires towards underachievement.

Daisy Addison’s work engages with ideas of aspiration, celebration and achievement through practices including sculptural installation, wall painting and drawing. Her ideas are initiated from recognisable forms referring to “post action and post celebration” leading the viewer to reflect upon societies expectations and outlooks. From the appropriation of symbolic forms of merit and awards to the language and images recalling our everyday environment, Addison explains that her work communicates humanity and positivity whilst simultaneously being empty of that very essence. In ‘Flaccid Flags’ flags have become dispossessed of their characteristic confidence and authority . Holding in mind both achievement and failure as well as the transience of success, the artist questions and confronts our fears of mediocrity and anticlimax.

Adam King explains that his practice appropriates and reconfigures the detritus and stuff of urban consumerism in order to create assemblages and collage-compositions which reference the post-apocalyptic, pastoral, macabre and otherworldly. Re-using materials and objects collected from skips, thrift and charity shops alongside brand new products, these “exotic cosmologies” are extravagant panoramas conveying an ambiguous identity. Transformed and altered through the act of cutting, spray painting, mark making, decorating and sewing, King sees his works as “viral works growing and developing organically”. The artist is inspired by a wide range of sources including historical landscape painting, textile design, recent American collage, ethnography, curiosity cabinets and books and manuals relating to scientific discovery and the natural world.

Exploring official forms of the baroque statuary and other conventional portraits “in memory of”, Rebecca Stevenson presents her sculptures as corrupted objects in a baroque spectacle. Endued with obsessive even fetishist decorative qualities, her works play incommensurably and with delight and enjoyment with ideas of supreme beauty and its inescapable grotesque aspect. The impulse to decorate is seen in her practice as an acting-out of desire that supplants the object's original form and meaning. Extending past the visual, sculptures engage on a visceral or sensual level, the sugary surfaces and succulent waxy fruits provoking the desire to taste or touch the work. The works are compelling in their ability to build desire from repulsion.

Adam King was born in Norfolk and lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include Beyond Pattern, Oriel Davies & Tour (2009-10); Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20/21 Visual Arts, Scunthorpe (2009); Pandamonium, Selfridges, Oxford Str., London (2009); Ambivalent Landscape, Monica Bobinska Gallery, London (Solo) (2008); Macabre Masterpiece of terror, Monica Bobinska; Brief replies: Site Specific Installations, New York (2008); Cosmopolis: Adam King and Yutaka Inagawa, Houldsworth Gallery (2008); Distant Echo Wilderness, Lounge Gallery, London (Solo) (2007); Prairie, Contemporary Art Project, London (Solo) (2006).

Rebecca Stevenson lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include Old Masters Reinterpreted, Rollo Contemporary Art, London (2009); Moments in Macabre, Bo Lee, Bath (2009); Gods and Mortals, Chelsea College of Art & Design, London (2009); Go For It!, (Olbrecht Collection), Weserburg Museum, Bremen (2008-09); Tempting Nature, Mogadishni, Copenhagen (Solo) (2008); Future 50 PSL, Leeds (2008); Whispers of Immortality, Natalia Goldin, Stockholm (2008); The Clearing, NETTIE HORN, London (2008); These Living Walls of Jet, Ceri Hand, Liverpool (2008); Innocents, Mogadishni, Copenhagen (Solo) (2007).

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© NETTIE HORN 2010