The Sunday Painter is pleased to announce the opening of John, featuring works by Piotr Lakomy, Hannah Lees, David Musgrave and Allyson Vieira. Showing alongside these works is an un-validated Middle Eastern stele from the1st Century AD.
A stylised human face carved into a slab of alabaster, 2000 years ago, or a badly made fake from the last century, both demonstrate a different demand, value or relationship with time. Through playing with these ideas John seeks to highlight humanity’s anthropocentric tendencies. Our experience of life is always through the human form, making it the prism through which we perceive, and unsurprisingly resulting in a self-referential version of reality. All the works in the show highlight this innate anthropocentric world-view, as artworks they represent and reflect the every person, be it through scale or through material language and it’s associations. When we look at the works we see traces of ourselves; this very same sensibility dates back to the earliest humans, the unknown every people from way back when.
The ambiguity of the stele is disseminated through the exhibition as a whole, evidenced through an uneasy relationship with history. Contemporary materials clash with historical forms in the work of Allyson Vieira, while David Musgrave casts an alien-like figure in the classical language of bronze. Piotr Lakomy evokes an unknowable future through an entirely utilitarian material, as Hannah Lees acknowledges decay and rejuvenation through the life cycles of ancient organic matter.
Piotr Lakomy (1983, Poland), lives and works in Poznan. Selected exhibitions include Endless Room, BWA Zielona Góra, PL, (2015), Tomorrow Will Be Smaller, Galeria Stereo, Warsaw, PL, (2014), Private Settings, (curated by Natalia Sielewicz), MOMA Warsaw, Warsaw, PL, (2014), The Space Between Us, Farenheit, (curated by Martha Kirszenbaum), Los Angeles, USA, (2014), YEAH AND LOOK WHERE IT GOT US, Mon Chéri, Brussels, BE, (2014), Life Size Shadow, The Sunday Painter, London, UK, (2013), Bold Tendencies 2013, London UK, (2013)
Hannah Lees (1983, UK) lives and works in London. Selected exhibitions include Hannah Lees, The Sunday Painter, London, UK (2015, forthcoming), Adventures in Clay, Bronze & Stone, Arezzo, IT (curated by Adam Carr) (2015), Spring Exhibition, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, DK, (2015), On the Devolution of Culture, Rob Tufnell, London, UK (2014), Wearing Potentiality, Paradise Row Gallery, London, UK (curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini) (2014), Conver- sation #5 Andrew Gillespie, Jack Lavender & Hannah Lees, Weekends, Millington | Marriott, London, UK (2014), The Unpainted landscape, Mihai Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, US, (2013)
David Musgrave (1973, UK) lives and works in London. Selected solo exhibitions include David Musgrave, Marc Foxx, Los Angeles, USA (2015), David Musgrave, Luhring Augustine, New York, USA (2014), David Musgrave, Greengrassi, Lon- don, UK (2012), Front Room, Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis, USA (2010). Selected group exhibitions include The Noing Uv It, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway (2015), Drawings and Prints – Selections from the Permanent Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (2014), Skeleton + Flesh and Ten Small Stories, part of the series Plastic Words, Raven Row, London, England (2014), The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things, The Bluecoat, Liverpool, En- gland; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, England; De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, England (2013)
Allyson Vieira (1979, USA) lives and works in New York and is a graduate of The Cooper Union and Bard College in New York. Selected solo exhibitions include The Plural Present at Swiss Institute, New York (2013), The Plural Present at Kuns- thalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland (2013), “Build On, Build Against, with Stephen Ellis at Non Objectif Sud, Tulette, France (2013), and Cortège at Laurel Gitlen, New York (2013). Selected group exhibitions include Future Generation Art Prize, Pinchuk Foundation, Kiev, Ukraine (2014), Remainder, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, curated by Lauren Ross (2013), Configurations, MetroTech Center Commons, Brooklyn, NY, curated by Andrea Hickey (2012), Lilliput at the Highline, New York, curated by Cecilia Alemani (2012), Knight’s Move, at Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY, curated by Fionn Meade (2010).