Rob Montgomery
PREPOSTEROUS 26th October – 18th January 2013
For the second year now, La Scatola Gallery will curate a group exhibition aiming to address a topic of great interest and relevance for contemporary art. If 2011 The Face Of The Shape focused on the concept of “mixed media” and the use of sculpture by artists working in a different field, this year’s Preposterous intends to draw attention to the dynamics of contemporary society and the arts’ response to the latter. The show will feature a selected group of artists whose work has provided a highly critical insight into our society.
It is plain to everyone that we are undergoing one of the most severe structural crisis ever to affect our society. Yet even in these dark times when the so called “western model of development” is seriously put into question by a creaking economy reeling in the grip of an unprecedented recession, those who dare to criticise the current state of affairs eventually end up in the wrong.
As the title suggests, the idea behind the exhibition is that what we are witnessing is a paradoxical reversal of roles defying all logic – hence Preposterous – whereby those responsible for the crisis are also called upon to solve it while those demanding for a drastic change in direction are accused of being “prophets of doom”.
Stephane Blumer: through a variety of different media including performance and video, his work concerns the congruencies between what is easily thought and impossible to express.
Ludovica Gioscia: inspired by social and retail anthropology Gioscia’s work is organized in a series of archives that are activated in her installations. The materials the artists collects and re-assembles are tools to unravel the complex dynamics of contemporary hedonism such as the psychology of marketing strategies.
Rebecca Griffiths: interested in the objects of mass-production and their associated materiality, Rebecca’s sculptural work explores the residue of lived experience. Frequently inventing processes that simultaneously de-stabilise and monumentalise the object, she questions what it means to reside in a world ‘designed to fit’.
Tina Hage: her photographic work aims to explore the relationship between the collective and the individual, focusing in particular on how this is represented by mass media.
Geoff Diego Litherland: taking inspiration from a vast imagery ranging from Romanticism to early science fiction, his work seeks to question our perception of nature as well as paintings’ historical and current role in that from a historical materialist perspective.
Robert Montgomery: working in a poetic post-situationist tradition, he hijacks advertising spaces in the city covering illustrated billboards with black posters on which are written poetical texts aiming to investigate our collective unconscious; Robert has also made a series of altered neon signs and sculptures using recycled sunlight.
littlewhitehead: littlewhitehead’s work is often deadpan. Drawing from mass media, environmental experience and art history, their work give glimpses into a peculiar fictional world whilst simultaneously referencing the ontological anxieties posed through life in post industrial Glasgow. Through irreverence, subversion and use of the uncanny, their work often examines the politics of reality and the complex relationship between fictions and truths.
Ben Woodeson: assembled from modular everyday materials and objects, his work intends to challenge the viewer to respond to a unique and evolving environment of cause and effect.
Jonas St. Michael: exploring the nature of representation, his photographic work focuses on the immediate cultural surroundings in an attempt to communicate a social reality while addressing the area that lies between truth and fiction in representational imagery.
An exhibition curated by Valentina Fois.
www.lascatolagallery.com/
PRIVATE VIEW
Friday 26.10.12
6PM – 8.30PM
To bring a little warmth to the crisp autumn evenings, we will be providing Italian artisan hot chocolate from the lovely people at Casanova Portobello! Come along whatever the weather and celebrate our new show with a delicious hot drink.
