Closed on Monday X Cement Fondu
Flat Earth Society
12 October - 8 December 2019
Closed on Monday presents a parallel and alternative exhibition to Cement Fondu’s Flat Earth Society. An exhibition within an exhibition, the show plays off the same curatorial premise, delving into the murky space at the boundary of the material and the digital.
Handmade works intended to appear digital, and digital works intended to appear handmade, are further mediated and confused by presentation in Closed on Monday’s virtual space, and its subsequent re-materialisation projected in Cement Fondu.
Grace Wood’s digital collages are presented alongside Alasdair McLuckie’s paper collages; Lauren Dunn’s analogue altered photographs are presented alongside Lydia Wegner’s meticulously staged photographs; and, in Sean Wadey’s work, painting and digital painting are blurred. Visualisations of portals and windows within Adrian Hobbs’ works suggest alternate dimensions and act as literal representations of the incidental, recurring and persisting to-and-fro of ideas within the exhibition.
Sarah Edmondson’s tactile needlepoint tapestries, which explore text, warp, pixels and glitch, are flattened and rendered untouchable in this digital context, mimicking their usual presentation in galleries when framed and behind glass.
Meagan Streader’s Response VII (Partition IV), continues a series of site-specific works that are constructed with neon lights in response to their physical locations. In Closed on Monday, Streader’s work maps and fragments the mezzanine space with an animated light installation, influenced directly by the surrounding architectural geometry. The structure moves and can be freely moved-through in ways that would be impossible in real life.
Certain aspects of Closed on Monday’s space also bleed into Cement Fondu’s; the unexpected meeting of projected and physical floor boards, the mirroring of mezzanines, the warehouse architecture and the immersive experience of interacting with artwork.