Presenting seven artists interested in the stuff from which art is made, this exhibition tested the temperature and textures of current art practice.
The exhibition included painting, sculpture, installation and animation by both emerging artists as well as more established names. The Way We Work Now brought together contrasting practices in which divergences are as important as connections. The artists shared a playful curiosity about the transformation of materials, a kind of ‘thinking through making’. Their inspirations ranging from anthropology, architecture, craft and art history.
The gestural abstraction and simple shapes of Stuart Cumberland’s paintings revisited and refreshed 1950s modernism, whilst Rachel Kneebone’s delicately crafted porcelain figures combined traditional references – 17th century Meissen figurines or Bernini’s marble sculptures – with the unexpected. Ian Kiaer’s carefully arranged groups of objects were shown alongside Adam Gillam’s handmade wooden structures, in which painting moved away from the wall into three dimensions, and Karin Ruggaber’s sculpture combined tactile surfaces and architectural form.
Francis Upritchard’s anthropomorphic adaptations included new sculptures made in Camden Art Centre’s Ceramics Studio and were presented in a theatrical installation in the Central Space. Finally, Roger Hiorns showed a group of new photographs alongside a series of ceramic sculptures which spill foam onto the gallery floor.
