GORDON CHEUNG
ROSIE LEVENTON
BRIGHID LOWE
EMMA MCNALLY
ABIGAIL REYNOLDS
TOVE STORCH
SARAH WOODFINE

UNFOLD
26 June– 2 August 2009

VIEW WORK

The connotations associated with paper refer systematically to the idea of retranscription; writtings and drawings being the retranscription of voices and thoughts and more widely of a certain reality. Through a range of differents practices and investigative approaches, Unfold questions a creative and explorative process which has the particularity of stepping, conceptually or concretely, from two dimensional mediums into a three dimensional space. These “new types of spatial fields” consecutively play and emphasize the virtual aspect of the “drawing process”, the physical nature of its material (carbon, paper) and techniques often associated to paper such as cutting, collage, folding; and therefore focusing on an interest in the physical world surrounding us.

Abigail Reynolds works with trajectories, networks and ordering systems. As a starting point she sets in motion a system and set of processes that result in a form being created. She works with materials to bring fugitive knowledge and connections into the immediacy of physical experience.
The series of collages “The Universal Now” plays with the idea of puzzle-like quality of something being thought-through. Splicing and joining images issued from second hand tourist guides, atlases and other photographs of the last century, Reynolds then cuts the paper in order to be able to fold it; pushing upwards and outwards. These new three dimensional objects go on to play with the viewer’s perception due to the perspective created by the grid and the changing and moving of the construction. (Abigail Reynolds is represented by Seventeen gallery).

Brighid Lowe uses a wide range of situations, materials and scale from site-specific installations to small, single photographs through which a new reading is encouraged. Central to Lowe's work is the idea of montage or assemblage, in which a juxtaposition of elements disrupts the context in which it is inserted. Recent work has also included the use of text, in various formats, collected from our daily surrounding.
The artist’s interest in the intersection of the virtual and the material is developed through a series of ongoing works called “Rain Drawings”. Using rain to interrupt a repetitive surface, the artist explains that the intention of this series is to set a concrete space against other imagined spaces or systems. In the drawing, repeated horizon lines are hand drawn onto the paper, which is then exposed to rainfall - the original linear marks then record the material, yet retaining the romantic space of the rain.

Emma McNally investigates the possibilities of semiotic connections and disconnections through a visually and conceptually dense use of pencil on paper. Her large and small-scale drawings offer themselves to the viewer as surfaces or sites for rhythmic relations of graphite marks disruptively connected in gatherings, collisions, swirls and dispersals that are both geometric and chaotic.
Her drawings lead us into worlds whose ramifications and layered works recall different essences of reality from the micro cosmos to the macro cosmos; her work also suggesting aerial views, geological formations, oceanic charts, disease transmissions, animal migratory routes as molecule structures and black holes. (1)

Gordon Cheung’s psychedelic-coloured paintings reveal an apocalyptic vision of our globalized world. Through a mixed medium of spray paint, oil, acrylic, pastels, newspaper and ink, Cheung is interested in the way we move between the physical world and the virtual realities of communications, technology, global finance and the internet. Cheung depicts artificial spaces, including epic landscapes informed by imagery such as science-fiction and 19th century romantic painting. “I use the Financial Times newspaper stock listings as I think of the stock market as a global dream-world that literally flows through all of us. This for me is a contemporary form of landscape from where I take inspiration and fuse images from the Internet on computer before printing directly onto sections of the stock listings to jigsaw back together on canvas.“ (2)

Rosie Leventon makes indoor and outdoor sculptural installations using a broad variety of recycled materials. All of Leventon's work however is grounded in a sensitive concern for the natural environment and how we use it. She sees her work as a way of interweaving a kind of personal archaeology with the archaeology of contemporary society and the physical archaeology of places, incorporating elements of surprise and humour.
Made with Paperbacks, the tower refers to suburban social housing - symbolising a space where large numbers of people gather without however being able to see, from an outside observation, any traces of life other than small spots of light.

Sarah Woodfine trained as a sculptor, which is evident in her approach to landscape, architecture and optical illusion - all being recurring themes in her work. Her drawings are often constructed as self-contained three-dimensional worlds reminiscent of architectural models and of children’s toys such as cut-out card castles and toy theatres. Each element is drawn in pencil with a precision and clarity that suggest a perfectly observed reality, but also conjure up the obsessive hallucinatory character of a dream or fantasy. Accessible and intimate, these scenes are made up of fragments and clues which invite viewers to invent their own stories.

Tove Storch combines virtual and physical aspects of the world in order to create objects which belong to a third kind of spatiality. She examines sculptural presence and spatial experience by asking questions such as : How does a form, volume or shape appear? - What are the formal rules for creating a sculpture? Storch’s sculptures are static while deeply engaged with movement. She investigates how sound or movement would look physically. Fragility and transience are found in all of her attempts to make three dimensional objects. The works are at once concrete, physical and real but at the same time transparent, floating, absurd and imaginary.

(1) See Ana Balona de Oliveira Fields, Charts, Soundings (Essay), January 2008
(2) Interview of Gordon Cheung in MYARTSPACE>BLOG / http://www.myartspace.com/blog/2007/11/art-space-talk-gordon-cheung.html, Nov 07

Installation View, Unfold, NETTIE HORN, London

Emma MCNALLY
Field 6
2009
305 x 221 cm
Graphite on paper 2009

Gordon CHEUNG
Living Machine (Study)
2008
109 x 154 cm
stock listings, ink, acrylic gel and spray on lascaux cloth

Abigail REYNOLDS
Houses of Parliament Helsinki
1948/1952
2007
Cut and folded vintage bookplates

Brighid LOWE
Rain Drawing I
2006
Pen, paper, rain
150 x 213 cm

Rosie LEVENTON
Somewhere a door slammed…
2009
Around 2000 books

Sarah WOODFINE
Crypt
2007
Pencil on paper in perspex box
22 x 30 x 22 cm

Sarah WOODFINE
Alfred's Story 2
2006
Pencil on paper in perspex box,
22 x 30 x 22 cm

Sarah WOODFINE
Boy
2008
Pencil on paper, perspex , white oak
45 x 60 x 30 cm