‘TRACE ELEMENTS 1971′ at The Factory Project

A fascinating artists talk yesterday evening with curator Rosalind Davis and chaired by Jillian Knipe with the artists from ‘Trace Elements 1971 at The Factory Project. It was a zoom ‘in conversation’ led by the artist, art critic and founder of Art Fictions podcast Jillian Knipe.

Listen to it here:   https://youtu.be/HyVfxmvoavU

 In depth discussions can bring out other elements in the artists work. I was interested in our dissection of the title ‘Trace Elements 1971’. Evident connections with historical context and manifestation captured through architecture via the location of the exhibition within the decaying Victorian Tate and Lyle factory but also the timeline set within this. This investigation and excavation into history’s bounty highlighted new finds. My work on show, the six constructed ‘Ghost’ sculptures reference my own response and alignment to a historic structure, a WW2 radar bunker. It was interesting to connect with 1971 – a year that heralded the computer age, although move the dial along the history timeline and tune back in to WW2 and the secret code breakers of Bletchley Park led by cryptographer Alan Turing and his team. Their endeavours paving the way forward to this New Media Age and the way the ‘Ghost’ sculptures can imagine this viewed as a group and at certain reference points of observation their surface painting recalling a pixelated landscape as their fractured and traced edges work alongside each other mimicking a digital format. Each slotted form complete with an embedded code. History does that, fragmenting thought process, pixelated interpretation, obscured – freeze frame moments creating a landscape that shape shifts and recalls.

‘TRACE ELEMENTS 1971’ curated by Rosalind Davis, artists include:

Hermione Allsopp, Fabio Almeida, Sasha Bowles, Rosalind Davis & Justin Hibbs, Richard Perry,
Lex Shute, Lisa Traxler, Andrea V Wright.

9-22 October 2021, 12-6pm daily
The Factory, Thameside Industrial Estate, `London E16 2HB
rosalind.davis@network.rca.ac.uk