I went to the White Cube in Bermondsey to see the new shows.
First of all, As If, Almost by Louise Giovanelli.
“Prairie” closer, from an angle:
These pictures show bodies blended together from different resolutions and imaging techniques – the internal structures, and the mechanical devices interacting with, sometimes it seems to be at the brink of a collision or fatality. This is a theme in other works on her website, “Compressions” showing a body needing emergency treatment on the edge of death, whilst in “Lookback” the reddish, meaty edges to the hand on the steering wheel is suggestive that a terrible, rupturing accident is about to occur. The larger paintings have a panoramic effect that suggests they contain multiple stories. The less-busy, more straightforward works are less effective as the style seems merely clumsy (is that tap mouth in “Romancing the sink” quite right, from the viewing perspective?), and relying more on the graphic artist’s vocabulary of sweaty rivulets and globules of fluid for “realistic” touches.
Finally, In Jest by Ilana Savdie.
More detail of “The Mouth briefly shut itself”:
As with Lundy’s work these are bodies recomposed from sections and segments taken at different structural levels (skeletal, muscular, the outer flesh) but not intersecting with machines but rather blending into landscapes or transforming into animal forms, in ways only faintly suggestive of the mythological models of centaurs or gorgons. The paintwork itself is in thick layers, in some parts like analglypta collage. Other pictures on Savdie’s website bring together materials from a wider range of sources than the magazines and medical textbooks that seem to be used in this collection: graffiti and commercial cartooning, brought together to show bodies (often exploited bodies) clearly in view whilst also obscured by the rendering in hundreds of slices.
The picture at the top is a photo I took of a key I saw lying a gutter. I wondered if anyone tried to find it, whilst it rusted away.
DiscontinuedNotes 