Unit 54/5th floor
Regents Studios
8 Andrews Road London E8 4QN
t +44 (0)7931 305 104
e motlondon@yahoo.co.uk
Open
Fri, Sat, Sun 12-5 or by appointment
Bethnal Green Underground
Bus 394,106,253,26,48,55,D6, D3, 8
NOW
AT MOT
To mark the final week of his exhibition at MOT, Karl Lydon will be exploding
his board of 400 party poppers on Sunday 15th June at 4pm
NEXT EXHIBITION
STEALTH 27th June - 26th July
Anna Barham, Steve Colson, Tony Peakall, Julian Wild
Private View 26th June 6-9
While browsing at an art bookshop I noticed a young man enter and make
his way to the magazines. He picked up one of the glossies and started
to leaf through it. Suddenly all the loose ad cards fell out onto the
floor. Calmly the young man bent down to pick them up and, as he did so,
I noticed him reach into his pocket, pull out a small card and insert
it with the others into the magazine and replace it back on the shelf.
He then walked out of the shop.
MOT were interested in how work could unfold, almost secretly, able to
creep up on the viewer, undetected, to infiltrate the consciousness through
stealth, rather than shock. We looked for work that was almost invisible,
not so much minimal, more that it was able to blend with its surroundings.
In the spirit of stealth MOT will approach the work with curatorial stealth,
rehanging the exhibition several times throughout its duration. Elements
may be added or taken away, sometimes in collaboration with the artist,
sometimes in order to confound the artist and their intention. like a
cat plays with its prey before the kill, MOT will taunt the preconceptions
of its audience and with the help of special forces, STEALTH will break
through your defences.
Anna Barham makes work that adds to or even dresses the space in which
it is shown. It is often slight and easily missed upon first viewing.
Be it tin foil arranged out of the way on the ceiling of a gallery or
paper doilies placed around the bases of pillars, Barham’s work
is always just enough, never needlessly showy, it hides itself shyly in
some corner waiting to be discovered, intelligently patient, slowly collecting
the persistent attentions of the connoisseur who sees beyond the boisterous
shouting strategies endlessly employed by the fame seekers jostling to
be noticed by the big men on the river. For STEALTH Anna Barham will be
showing lengths of angled steel that have been drilled full of holes mimicking
the patterns of paper doilies.
Julian Wild utilises plumbing materials, creating complicated ducting
configurations that have none of the traditional uses associated with
the materials. copper pipe traverses walls and ceilings, blending into
the physical workings of the spaces that the work seeks to transcend.
Not much differentiates these new systems from those that they seek to
mimic, except, apart from their redundancy as working vessels for the
transportation of water or gas, Wild’s plumbing is confounded by
the introduction of rogue elements. This could be as simple as a bulge
in the pipe, partly comic, yet vaguely plausible, just enough to make
you rethink your initial response to the work.
Steve Colson carved a giant rabbit last year as part of the MOT Summer
Project. An element of this piece was a large shadow of the rabbit rendered
in MDF. For STEALTH Colson will be presenting sculptures that are just
the shadows. As to what will cast these projections, remains unclear.
There may be a threat of narrative. Apparitions may blend into the very
fabric of the gallery. All could depend on the light. A tactic has been
employed to keep us guessing.
Tony Peakall has been working on the same project for five years. Every
Summer over the weekend during the early hours Tony drives through the
streets of London in search of new prey. Once his victim is located and
tracked down, overalls, florescent work jacket and hard hat are donned,
one large can of road marking spray is employed and another London Gallery
is tagged. Each receives the same mark, an arrow denoting the boundary
between art space and the street and the abbreviation GAL. Three photographs
are taken to document the gallery, its location and the tag. This process
is repeated five times a night. Upon hearing about this work you suddenly
start noticing these marks all around the city, even outside MOT. It is
their invisibility and the stealth employed in order to disguise the process
that is intriguing about this piece. MOT are looking forward to the challenge
of how to show a work that has existed on the perimeter of the gallery
and ensnare it within the context of a gallery exhibition without taming.
Intrigued I bought the Magazine.
FUTURE EXHIBITIONS AT MOT
SCRAMBLED 1st - 29th August
Simona Brinkmann, Maria Fusco, Melanie Stidolph
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