NICKY DEELEY
PING PING PING WEDNESDAY 10TH DEC – SATURDAY 24TH JAN 2009 PRIVATE VIEW – Thursday 11th
Seventeen is proud to present new works by New Zealand born artist Nicky Deeley.
The exhibition constitutes a series of totemically charged depictions of dead or dying creatures. The corpses of ornate coiled serpents, imagined velveteen marsupials sit alongside contemporary corporate mascots, a caricature sausage is captured in the ecstatic death-throes of its ritual sacrifice. Each of these forms a miniature death garden that sprouts foliage, permeating every visible surface in an explosion of fauna, fungi and flowers; a force stretching chaotically outward.
The human relationship with the innate and sometimes startling power of the natural world is a theme that runs throughout this exhibition. In particular Deeley's florid, chromatically abundant sculptures celebrate the predispositions of animistic or 'magical' culture to engender mythic, ritualistic and ceremonial engagement with the unanswerable questions that human existence proposes. The bizarre fusion of the natural and contemporary iconography within the work presents the notion that, refracted by a post-enlightenment perspective and transposed into a sea of 'personalised' ideology, these mechanisms and meta-narratives today continue to inconspicuously manifest in the western world.
Fashioned from a consciously cluttered range of materials and executed with a glossy touch, Deeley's expired creatures appear as a hopeful and strangely whimsical treatment of the ordinarily brutal natural processes of decay and entropy.
PING PING PING from Nicky Deeley at Seventeen Gallery December 11th
Author
Mark Westall is the Founder and Editor of FAD magazine Founder and co-publisher of Art of Conversation and founder of the platform @worldoffad
Related Posts
Paul’s Gallery of the Week: Seventeen
I’ve followed Seventeen closely since it was established in 2006 by former artist David Hoyland at 17 Kingsland Road, Shoreditch – retaining the name when it edged into Dalston by moving a mile up the road to the less snappily numbered block 270-276.
What’s Wrong with Art: Its addiction to alcohol
Tabish Khan the @LondonArtCritic loves art and visits hundreds of exhibitions a year. But every now and then he comes across something in […]
Eduardo Paolozzi’s early deconsacrations – ‘Pop’ collages and lost-wax bronzes on view at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert
Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert gallery are showing the first of a series of three exhibitions honouring Eduardo Paolozzi.
A Burn Scar Visible from Space is an upcoming exhibition of photographs from Taryn Simon’s ongoing series Black Square
A Burn Scar Visible from Space is an upcoming exhibition of photographs from Taryn Simon’s ongoing series Black Square, begun in 2006.
Trending Articles
The Top 5 Art Exhibitions to see in London right now Tabish Khan the @LondonArtCritic picks his favourite art exhibitions to see in London right now, all closing this week.
The Top 6 Art Exhibitions to see in mid-March A year on the South Coast, AI, vibrant colours, obituaries, fibre and glass.
A Trip to TEFAF A Trip to TEFAF - the world’s premier wide-ranging art fair - design, jewellery, clocks, books etc, across 270 stands
Ai Weiwei makes his Middle Finger available to all in new interactive online artwork Avant Arte has announced a new collaboration with celebrated contemporary artist Ai Weiwei to make his work available to all.…