NEW ART at the Depot - inspired by the Depot

DEPOT
curated by Stewart Gough.

Charlesworth, Lewandowski and Mann
Tod Hanson
Hiroe Komai
Tom Ormond
Christine Sullivan and Rob Flint

Private View Thursday 9th. September 2010. 6-9pm.
11th September 3rd October
Saturday & Sunday 12-6pm or by appointment

VULPES
VULPES
Unit 4. Prout Road, Clapton, E5 9NP.
www.vulpesvulpes.org

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DEPOT is an invitation to five artists, collectives and collaborations to exhibit new work responding to the specifics of the Vulpes Vulpes project space. Vulpes Vulpes and its associated artists studio community is located within the historic Clapton tram depot; a familiar landmark of the area's Victorian heritage. A landmark which has recently and controversially been scheduled for demolition and development.

The project invites a collective reflection upon the site's function as a depot, from the original designed use as both stables and for the garaging and maintenance of vehicles, to the present incarnation stationing artists investigations within gallery and studio. The 'depot' provides a physical and temporal space for intersection, interaction and exchange and facilitates the trial and testing of individual critical enga! gement. DEPOT is a celebration of the project space as a tempo! rary stationing point acting as both host and independent hub for distribution.

The exhibited works demonstrate an enthusiastic engagement with the space, displaying a spectrum of response spanning studio-based painting and relief sculpture to site-specific installation, socially engaged intervention and conceptualised performance.

Charlesworth, Lewandowski and Mann construct a towering superstructure inspired by the apparatus of civic crowd control and municipal architecture. Built upon a concrete base incorporating speakers, the tower plays host to a new sound work and is adorned with objects of resistance and protest.

Tod Hanson provides a significant graphical intervention, registering his presence within the space by painting directly across two walls of the gallery. He describes the work as ! a 'brittle planet of twisted fossil blossom, as it explodes its locality and becomes lost in the wide-screen vastness of the confined space.'

Hiroe Komai's collage of small geometric cut-outs provides the essential insight into the process and methodology leading to her suspended construction in perspex and wood: a relief sculpture of shifting hexagonal planes suspended cloud-like against the gallery's characteristic roof structure.

Tom Ormond's large scale painting re-casts the space as a rustic interior in timber and stone, a deliberate caricature of the nostalgia for the building's bygone age. True to Ormond's recent works depicting interior spaces we see a central, almost supernatural vortex taking form; paint and light signifying a creative presence, providing the essential access point for abstraction.

Christine Sullivan ! and Rob Flint use the venue as host for their continued investig! ation into the live vocal relaying of films. Presented here as a video document, they take turns describing episodes of cold war sci-fi series 'The Outer Limits' on a television placed tantalisingly off-screen. Denied access to the original image, the viewer assembles from the split-screen presentation a second-hand narrative of robots, rockets, time travel and paranoia, while the frantic soundtrack hangs in the space between the two narrators.

Stewart Gough www.stewartgough.com tel: (+44/0) 7790 062391.