Natural Wonders: New Art From London BAIBAKOV Art Projects
Natural Wonders is guest curated by Nick Hackworth, a London-based writer, gallerist and curator and co-curated by BAIBAKOV Art Projects, Maria Baibakova and Kate Sutton.
Showing until 5th April 2009 BAIBAKOV Art Projects
Natural Wonders: New Art from London seeks to capture the energy, vitality and diversity of practice of over twenty artists who have taken centre stage in London in recent times. Their ages,
national and ethnic backgrounds are varied, as is their work. They are united principally by the fact that they live and work in London, where they participate in and form part of one the city’s most
vibrant and globalised subcultures.
As such, Natural Wonders, is also an oblique and subjective answer to the question “How does one judge what is great or noteworthy if one dispenses with the idea of progress?
The mindset, freed from delusions of teleological progress, values cultures that encourage the greatest possibilities for expression and self-expression.
As such, London is celebrated for its vast and generous diversity,for its openness to the streams of people, ideas and capital that flow across our planet, all of which has made London, at the moment, the most international city in the world and truly an urban culture.
This great diversity finds a clear expression in London’s contemporary art scene.
Beyond merely presenting some of the most compelling work being made in London now, Natural Wonders attempts to identify some of the different trends in thought and cultural production that
animate the selected artists. Accordingly, in physical terms, the exhibition is conceived as ajourney through multiple zones, each of which is comprised of work that shares a particular aesthetic or intellectual correspondence.
During this journey, we encounter the work of artists who engage deliberately and self-consciously with the legacy of Modernism, but who do so through the filter of their contemporary experience, often using irony and low-fi materials. We find paintings that employ the language of abstraction with a level of sincerity unseen for decades.
We see work that responds to the new urban environment, uncovering beauty and significance in the landscapes of concrete, glass, and metal, of coloured neon, fraying posters, and the cornucopia of rubbish that makes a constantly-shiftingcollage of our streets.
We discover figurative paintings that testify to the continuing relevance of an ancient genre alongside work that unabashedly finds profundity in the decorative, and work that looks for meaning in myths and symbols long ignored by the dominant culture of modernity.
In simple terms, this exhibition aspires to provide a glimpse of some of the most interesting art currently being made in a great and vibrant city. Natural Wonders invites the viewer to appreciate its variety, the curious and thrilling mix of “plumage, petals, bristling fur, bared teeth, and wit,”comprising the creative landscape of London.
Natural Wonders: New Art from London is the second exhibition to be presented by BAIBAKOV art projects in its exhibition space on the third floor of the former Red October Chocolate Factory.
The show features over twenty London based artists including Tim Braden, Shezad Dawood, Idris Khan, Mark Leckey, Eloise Fornieles, Conrad Shawcross and Douglas White.
Natural Wonders is guest curated by Nick Hackworth, a London-based writer, gallerist and curator, and co-curated by BAIBAKOV art projects Maria Baibakova and Kate Sutton.
NATURAL WONDERS. New Art from London BAIBAKOV art projects
Red October Chocolate Factory6, Bersenevskaya Naberezhnaya, 3rd Floor Moscow
