Not content in moving to a new gallery space in Shoreditch during Frieze, Limoncello now pop up on Cork Street Mayfair for a new exhibition: ‘Short-Term Storage’ by Holly Hendry and Kate Owens.
Detail of Kate Owens, ‘Full Drop, Half Drop, Brick, Spot, Diamond, Triangle, Stripe, Hexagon, Ogee, Scale, Mirror, Turn-over, Swiss, Tossed, All-over’, 2016, Screen Print on Cotton, 2.5 x 50m
Limoncello Mayfair doesn’t quite fit. We’re too East End, too young, and one of us commutes into Liverpool Street. But… when offered this beautiful Mayfair gallery for a short period we asked Holly Hendry and Kate Owens to make a spare but bold installation.
We flippantly pitched it to the The Pollen Estate as two artists who make big work, big sculpture, strong but soft. Which is a lazy, useless description, but, we are a bit lazy and useless sometimes. And anyway, it does work as a 11 word summary. Kate Owens’ currently incomplete work ‘Full Drop, Half Drop, Brick, Spot, Diamond, Triangle, Stripe, Hexagon, Ogee, Scale, Mirror, Turn-over, Swiss, Tossed, All-over’ is a swimming pool-sized roll of screen-printed fabric, onto which she prints both a tile pattern and her daily borrowings from her local pool. From hair bands and bobby pins to used plasters and goggle parts, Owens seeks and removes the objects from the pool’s bottom; she screen-prints them in her makeshift bathroom print studio, then returns them to the pool. She’s 17 metres in to making the 50 metre work. ‘Short-term Storage’ is the first showing of the work. It will take a while to finish. There are many aspects to the work: the performativity, duration, make-do making, awkwardness of the huge object and obstinate challenges of its display, all of which can all be explored to articulate words in relation to the piece. But, actually, it’s the nature of her borrowing that is most attractive; the idea of foraging precious rubbish, using it and returning it. A cyclicality to her activity that makes it both wholesome and peculiar. Which is a good way in to thinking about of a lot of works in Owens’ humbly magnificent practice. Standing as an obstacle to the front door is Owens’ car-crashed barrier piece; designed, made, crashed into, then painted in ‘sea-side town’ blue. The rough abuse of her object is contrasted in Holly Hendry’s floor to ceiling, beanpole metal sculpture with its tiny comedy bite mark. Contrasted, but forming allegiance as well, in their shared idea of metal as an uncannily manipulable material. Hendry’s ‘Gut Feelings (Stromatolith)’ is an open-sided, metal-topped block that houses a geology of oozy, foamy, cotton candy-coloured poured plaster, lumpy grey cement and laser cut birch ply; each strata borrowing its seemingly flabby form from its neighbour. Peppered within the layers are erroneous elements; metal props, rock salt, marble chunks, chewing gum, lipstick, and again comically sculptural dog chew bones and spinning plaster teeth. Organic and synthetic have osmosed and forms and surfaces are not dependable. Hendry’s work is a decadent material assault that holds an immense (and smile-inducing) satisfaction; it can be tangibly felt by the viewer’s eyes alone. We are delighted to announce that we now represent Holly Hendry, this is her first exhibition with Limoncello.
Opening Thursday 13th October, 6 – 8pm Until Saturday 22nd October, Limoncello 34 Cork Street London W1S 3NU www.limoncellogallery.co.uk
About The Artists
Kate Owens (b. 1979, Bo’ness, Scotland, based in London) gained her BA Fine Art Painting at Edinburgh College of Art (2002) and her MA Sculpture at Royal College of Art, London (2008). Recent solo shows include New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester, UK (as part of Artist Rooms); Limoncello, London, UK; Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Edinburgh, UK (2013); The Goma, Madrid, ES (2012); Seventeen Gallery, London, UK (2011); Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, UK (2007). Recent group shows include Frutta, Rome, IT; Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK; DREI, Cologne, DE (all 2014); Baltic 29, Newcastle, UK; Fold Gallery, London, UK; Galerie Arnaud Deschin, Marseille, FR (all 2013); Altman Siegel, San Francisco, US; Galerie Valentin, Paris, FR; Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK (all 2012).
Holly Hendry (b. 1990, based in London, UK) gained her BA Fine Art at The Slade School of Fine Art (2013) and her MA Sculpture at the Royal College of Art (2016). Her forthcoming show takes place at Limoncello Cork St, London, UK (2016), with Kate Owens, and recent solo shows include Rice + Toye, London, UK (2016); Bosse & Baum, London, UK (2015); The Oval, London, UK; and Gallery North, Newcastle, UK (both 2014). Recent group shows include VITRINE, London, UK; The Royal Standard, Liverpool, UK; CBS Gallery, Liverpool, UK; Cowley Manor, Cotswolds, UK (all 2016); Turf Project Space, Croydon, UK; Chesterfield House, London, UK; Salt + Powell, York, UK (all 2015); S1 Artspace, Sheffield, UK; and Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, AE (both 2014).
