Spencer Tunick - "Explorations in Architecture" @ Hales Gallery
For his fourth solo show at Hales, Tunick focuses on a series of photographs that operate against the backdrop of architectual buildings; a town square in Mexico City, a car park in Amsterdam, and outside the Sage Centre in Gateshead. Hundreds and thousands of naked bodies fill these images, acting as a kind of repetitive architectural device, adding an aspect of a form within a form to the buildings.
Robert Currie - "8 Days, 17 Hours, 46 Minutes and 21 Seconds" @ VINEspace
The long, corridor space at VINEspace helps this installation, where Currie uses videotape to create clear black lines following the interior walls. The building up, and weaving of the tape helps define shapes, and are familiar methods for articulating form with pencil on paper. These lines seem to grow out of the wall and appear crystal-like, with a pleasing geometric sensibility.
Gemma Holt - "Work on Paper" @ Limoncello
Gemma Holt has created her own size of paper in competition to the industry standard a4. Her paper (called g5) is used for all the correspondance from Limoncello - the invitations, invoices, loan forms, press releases, exhibition maps. Everything. This exhibition has a pile of g5 paper, along with "Ruler Stick" (same height as Holt, with each brass oak unit based on her thumb measurement), a beautiful patterned carpet which is pased on the G paper series, and a Mobius bangle pile made using the G ration, and cutting G5 paper into strips. These simple manipulations disclose an intense engagement with the everyday, revealing something unique about the objects we take for granted.
WITH (withyou.co.uk) @ Rokeby
This show will be forever changing, and will look different every day of every hour you go to visit it. Although it may seem a little dry, give it a go and you will "get" what "withyou" are on about.
Laura Prouvost - "You Are The Only One" @ Monika Bobinska
Crammed into the tiny, ex-Wilkinson space, are 3 large packing crates. Inside these are Provoust's videos, pure colour fields trying to replicate smell, and sound. These boxes isolate the viewer, but also make them incredibly aware of what's going on around them. The accompanying email correspondance is intruiging and funny, but the paintings are dissapointing.
John Frankland - "Boulder" @ PEER
Exhibition documenting the public work Frankland undertook a few monts ago - placing two large, megolithic rocks to parks in Mabley Green and Shoreditch. Had really nice food at the PV.
Sinta Werner - "Grey Areas" @ Nettie Horn
The large-scale installation dominating the main area of Nettie Horn structurally disrupts the space, and the viewer. It's a strange, dizzy way to enter the familiar space. Werner's work deconstruct and fragment the space, creating illustions and ficitious environments. Her practise deals with the concept of one-point-perspective, an usual topic, it thus creates a unique viewing point where her work appears "flat" and pictorial.
Hew Locke - "The Kingdom of the Blind" @ Iniva
Presenting a major new installation, Locke's Kingdom of the Blind is a fictional collection of the possessions of an imaginary ruler. Standing tall (up to 14ft) the monumental figures line the walls and seem to surround the viewer territorially when you view them. Depicting the rulers rise to power, the figures act as votive objects made up of fake leather handbags, plastic animals, dolls heads and fake guns.
