Launching the week museums and art institutions open in London this exhibition is part of an ongoing programme that Vanessa Vainio will present in galleries and independent spaces in cities around the globe throughout 2021 and 2022.
The works in this exhibition explore the concept of light as a process. Each artist has been chosen as their work explores perspectives on photographic processes, using the body, light and air as their materials. Working in painting, sculpture, photography, and print, the artists approach these mediums from many directions.
In Finnish artist Josefina Nelimarkka’s process-based practice, art, science and technology merge into fleeting moments and interactive spaces. She works with light to create abstract works that illustrate the unseen in our environment. Her current research looks into the atmospheric condition, the politics of air, the ontological properties of matter and the future scenarios of climate change.
The work “Kairos” (pictured center) is embodied in a 7 meter silk installation which will hang
in the gallery space amongst Josefina’s Atmospheric pigment paintings and Invisible glass sculptures. Kairos brings forth the momentary time and the weather conditions through sensuous materiality. The work has recorded on its silky surface the changing conditions in the environment: light, temperature, rain, wind, sleet, snow and other consequential flows and forces. These seasonal changes have created different patterns and shades of colour – and become the experience of the installation. For one year, the chemical process en-plein-air in the boreal forest in Finland turned the atmospheric flux into an ongoing experiment of blue.
Alexander Montague-Sparey is a British artist working with performance, the moving image, photography and installation. Alexander uses performance and photography in his two new series, “Into the Light” and “Body Language” which will both be shown for the first time. Alexander’s work challenges visual traditions and cultural assumptions surrounding the depiction of the body. “I don’t see these works so much as photographs as I do documents of performances, which I needed to do and needed to share. I wanted to show the body as free from masculine and feminine tropes, still quite uncommon in the history of image making. These works are above all moments of freedom, release and surrender. Themes which have become of crucial importance to all of us at this time. In images such as these, we are moving closer to a depiction of humans as people, rather than merely ‘men’ or ‘women’. By working to erase the gender binary we are automatically brought closer together.”
Russian born and London based artist Olga Grotova will be showing two new paintings from her series “Arches and Vessels” completed this year. Her work takes family history, landscapes, troubled ecologies and experience of displacement as starting points for installations, paintings and performances. Her work involves going on journeys to map and collect histories, mainly concerning the lives and labours of Eastern European women that have been overlooked and erased from the established narratives. “In the series I am engaging with this little-known female history through drawing, monoprinting and painting. The vessels are often depicted in Russian iconography; in this series they symbolise the feminine: three generations of women passing knowledge and experience like the waters cascading through the tiered filtering system. The arches are the negative images of the vessels: in icons they are the portals to access the divine and all that cannot be depicted. The works are made using natural mineral mineral pigments that build up like the strata, layering like histories and memories.”
About Vanessa Vainio
Vanessa Vainio is an independent London-based curator and advisor focused on emerging and mid career artists in the contemporary art world. After launching her nomadic artist platform in 2019, her program features projects in London, Paris, New York and Hong Kong, among other cities, in galleries and independent spaces.
www.vanessavainio.com
@vanessa_vainio
Exhibition:
This exhibition has already taken place
Vanessa Vainio is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Josefina Nelimarkka, Alexander Montague-Sparey and Olga Grotova at Cromwell Place this May.
This Cromwell Place exhibition has already taken place
About the Hosts
Vanessa Vainio
With over 12 years experience in blue chip galleries such as Skarstedt and Lisson Gallery. Launching her nomadic platform for artist projects in 2019, her program focuses on emerging and mid career artists in the contemporary art world. Vanessa’s program will continue to open temporary projects in London, Paris, New York and Hong Kong in galleries and independent spaces.
