Jen O’Farrell - No Longer Endless @ Neven

Jen O’Farrell
No Longer Endless
@ Neven

We might very well be on a stretch of bad road. I can’t help but think of something George Carlin once said, ‘the planet is going to shake us off like a bad case of fleas’. Perhaps it’s not so bad, this idea that despite an overwhelming reach, humans could be a short lived, inconsequential chapter in Earth’s history. Jen O’Farrell illustrates the pervasive influence we wield, and the synchronous derangements shaping the material environments around us.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and everything in between.

No Longer Endless vastly differs aesthetically to the previous show, Hoping held at Neven gallery, but connective tendrils and overarching themes reverberate between the two. Allusions to Capitalism as a bitch that doesn’t quit, market expansionism and the unrelenting creep of global commerce under neoliberal ideology are undercurrents, weaving a narrative that questions our impact on the world and the fleeting nature of our existence. Where Bransfield was ceaseless, absurd consumption and glamorous disposability, O’Farrell is the raw beginnings and left over sludge that bookends him.

Born in 90s Liverpool and currently residing and practicing in London, O'Farrell is undoubtedly familiar with navigating the shifts and turnovers within commercial landscapes. The marrow of her works is steeped in urban decay and decline. Among grime and rusted countenances, amidst economic shifts and political convulsions, the themes of disposability and the precarious nature of industrial mindsets from bygone eras unfold as inherent vulnerabilities in her works.

We think about “what once was”, invariably leading to “what now?”. Back up, reverse course, the question becomes “from where did it come?”

The legacy of industrialisation, the colonist mindset of entitlement. The narrative of history’s impact seeps out as a spectral echo.

Navigating surface terrains from remote to urban, O’Farrell digs and scrapes for the essence of our existence in the intricacies of resource procurement and reclamation. Lust for Domination. Moments of Power, Slick Tenacity. Her works carry the weight as a testament to the human dichotomy of reckless plunder and solemn preservation.

It manifests in the salt and sand from far away coastlines and deserts, in the foraged soil and clay, in the harvested bio-resin of the Algarrobo tree.

Elements and materials once confined to specific locales embarking on transcontinental journeys along coordinated supply chains. Stringing together the threads of passage, O’Farrell's works explore the traces we leave. Maximal Impact. Convergence Zone. Ground and grime, raw mineral and waste matter percolate. In the dirt of urban construction, in the spray paint and varnish on corroded iron signs, in the dulled surfaces of once-pristine plexiglass and perspex, in the residual ash, O’Farrell finds her mediums.

We reckon with the fallout. The currents of globalisation carrying transmutations of commodities and their life cycles beyond. This is the matter encompassing multitudes and finites, plenty and scarcity. Extracted and subsumed back into the crust of the earth, and the human hands that orchestrate such. Continual Interference.

In this way, O’Farrell is an alchemist, infusing vitality into the dormant substances. Conducting their transformation like a maestro, the master of metamorphosis. This is more than lifeless land art, the movement of inert substances from point A to point B,C,D…. In the chemistry of material interactions, the chemistry of creation unfolds. The artist lets go and elemental forces rule this process; taking over, guiding the stream, coursing through like a dynamic force. Blend, mix, merge, amalgamate - an expressive resonance of the materials.

To Remain. 

No Longer Endless.

Our grasp is tenuous over Mother Nature; in the end, she always wins out. In the gallery the works hang like memorial plaques in a mausoleum, the gestures and marks symbolic epitaphs forging a connection between the organic and the synthetic, the ancient and the contemporary.

We are intertwined with the very ground beneath our feet, a connection innate and universal. The subtle embrace of the land, though often unnoticed, shapes our existence. The acquaintance of materials that runs deep, and the framework of our lives man-made. Terrain and structures are a woven cloak that cocoons us. Bound to the essence of our surroundings, we fare through the ever-changing mosaic of existence.

Jen O’Farrell

No Longer Endless

On until 16 December 

Neven

353 Cambridge Heath Rd, E2 9RA

Tender like asphalt @ Sherbet Green

Tender like asphalt

Xiaochi Dong, Kalpesh Lathigra and Juliette Lena Hagar

10 Nov - 22 Dec

Sherbet Green

To contemplate the self as an intricate landscape, is to liken identity to roads of transient impressions. In the liminal spaces within our individual topographies, where contours blur and edges dissolve, observers engage in introspective wanderings.

Currently on at Sherbet Green, 'Tender like asphalt' features works by artists Xiaochi Dong, Kalpesh Lathigra, and Juliette Lena Hagar. The artistic practice of each can be surmised as circumscribing the breadth of being—contemplations revolving around the individual and their positioning within social constructs that delineate life. The artworks traverse dialogues, weaving journeys with diverse cadences and converging elements, where subjectivity and perception are interlaced with universal truths and unchanging principles.

Interlocutions between materiality, process, and the ephemeral unfold within the exhibition, with the mediums of painting, found object, and photography serving as conduits for exploration. The exhibition invites viewers into a nuanced viewing of the interplay between these elements, creating a space where the tangible and the intangible converge.

The vast emptiness of distance and immaterial expanses are meditative places where one can exhale.

Xiaochi Dong’s paintings provide both latitude and a means to enter into the curatorial dialogue of the show. Discreetly hanging in the space, these small-scale works, neutral and benign, act as a clandestine entry point to the exhibition.The initial impression of these unobtrusive canvases might be easily missed or dismissed, lacking a jarringly immediate presence. However, their function gradually unfolds upon introspection, gently permeating the space.

Dong’s inspiration is drawn from the boundless expanses of the natural world, teeming with multitudes and minuscules, with a particular focus on artificial landscapes. It may be said such spaces are where the human preoccupation lies with occupation. Assaying and arrangement of the natural world, structuring and ordering elements, striving for functionality and harmony. Intervention is perhaps fundamental to human’s fascination with environments. The will to impose limits, to condense, to restructure, to bend it to our liking, is a quest to confine the unknown other. Order, sequence. It is all an intricate choreography - and an act of dominion. 

The small-scale canvases by Dong allude to a larger other, suggesting a spiritual journey in the fringes of perception and the recesses of consciousness. The exhibition text introduces the concept of "woyou," akin to "wandering while lying down," portraying the works as both boundless and bounded, like an imagined ocean in a seashell, we hear the rush of our own blood in our ears.

There is a flux between speciality and perception when trying to follow the ontological relationship between nature, humans, and the workings of the inner mind. To dream in monochrome, wander in the mind. Benign linen, pastel inks, and volcanic ash hinting at fragility, transience, and the primordial.

The reverie is ephemeral and cyclical. Situated in the vacant space of mindful/quiet contemplation, space in this sense exists as both void and conduit, where tension is married to calm stillness, extending beyond the conventions of TIME and materiality. 

It is a space where expanses exist both condensed and stretched, realms in a continuum, traversing dimensions and connecting to something transcendental.

Movement occurs in the textured echoes of potentiality.

The physicality in Juliette Lena Hagar’s sculptural assemblages is the counterpoint to the ethereality of Dong’s practice, creating a dynamic interplay between tangible and intangible elements.

An archive of sorts emerges from the mundane ephemera of life; artefacts of another's past, some stranger’s history, someone else’s lore. The installations begin to make an eerie sort of sense in the aural tone of the exhibition, with marks of attrition and careful arrangements hinting at a tangibility that is atemporal, achronological.

The materiality of adornment and banality is meticulously considered. The physicality and wear present in the fragments is liminality in emblematic form. Having been plucked from time's grasp, these miscellaneous items are suspensions in a disrupted continuity where identity and event/action become elusive. Perceptions are cleaved, self-evident realities are reconstituted. The nostalgia is familiar, unsettlingly, it is also not.

Within Hagar’s assemblages, navigating the terrain of individual and collective experience, placement is a board-game with rules open to interpretation.

Free associations within and beyond Hagar’s works pick at ingrained mechanisms and dynamics defining social structures, human interaction, ceremony, and routine. Objects are leveraged, introduced to play, emancipated from past and predetermined narratives. The visual language is tactile and speaks of function and states of being. Existence is an open place of potentials where authenticity is tested, materiality is a choreography and the choreography contemplates the fluid nature of reality. Play is in the simulation of presence, play occurs in the experience of performance and the absurdity found within the ideas of memory and veracity.

The unsettlingly comforting idea emerges that transformation is a road map on which a compass swings and points to elusive truths. The human essence, a mosaic of layered narratives, emblems, and experiences, unfurls and contracts at the intersections and crossroads.

Connection is found by navigating the non-linear lanes of selfhood.

Through the space and thematic scaffolding of the show, subjectivity and constructed narratives are balancing elements in the photography of Kalpesh Lathigra. Just as Dong and Hagar interrogate materiality in abstract terms to create expansive artworks and redefine the terms of interaction and engagement, the medium of photography itself is harnessed to shape how we receive and fit into our realities.

Within the mesh of his works, Lathigra acts as somewhat of an initiator and historian, where subjectivity is interwoven in the constructed observations marking the existence of figures, events, and space. Curating the uncannily familiar, memory and nostalgia become a collective experience, crafting mythology from the fragments of unspoken stories.

For Lathigra, the photographic process is an act that shapes narratives. Pictures are totems of personhood; the individual, space, presence, and absence are bound to the medium. Polaroid, camera-less techniques, and film techniques are tools from which the artist extracts shared humanity. A levelling occurs from the universality of portraits and snapshots, where the notions of identity and individuality become flattened and then opened up, existing in non-hierarchical states.

There is liminality to the picture as an object, an intermediary in the linearity of time. It is a node on the self, marking passage and transformation, allowing for play with one’s chronology and presence. The snapshot becomes the only material remnant of the existence of something temporal, heavy with subjective nostalgia that comes with reflections on time’s passing, of vacancy.

In this playground of exploration, constructs of identity are synthesised and recontextualised. Staging is a term of engagement, an intermediary place, and portrayal is a form of suspension. The imprints etched in the cartography of uncharted selfhood. Existence is shaped by the weight of memory and anticipation.

Sherbet Green’s exhibition, ‘Tender like asphalt’ contemplates life’s constant ebb and flow, the ceaseless metamorphosis of circumstances, to reveal the inherent absurdity of change itself. The capricious nature of change challenges our comprehension and senses. Through the works of each artist, we encounter introspection, ephemeral glimpses of moments in time, and the elusive, transitional spaces that often escape our conscious awareness. Lines of communication, interplay and consequences, are enigmatic orchestrations in constructed realities. Observation and action are temporal milestones in the tapestry of our shared history. The absurdity of order and continuity in the often unpredictable narrative of human existence is a spectrum of tactile truths.

Human experience, is a perpetual oscillation.

10 Nov - 22 Dec

Sherbet Green
Unit 1
2 Treadway St, 
London E2 6QW

Woodsy Bransfield Hoping @ Neven Gallery

I thought I was sick of seeing plastic pink.

I definitely am, but it’s a good sick if it’s because of Woodsy Bransfield.

Truthfully, I was getting over dusty rose by 2016. Bubblegum and blush started to make me want to hurl somewhere around 2018 - 2019.

The 2020s got much worse. Entrepreneurship, celebrity culture, corporate marketing and grinding hustle all hit a zenith. Pastel pink; Ariana. Beige pink; Skims. Rose gold; Random Internet Influencer. Champagne pink cosmetics, pink diamond lux aesthetics, fuchsia fashion, hot pink products, coral coloured branding. Merchandise, endorsement, partnership. Peony, flamingo, cotton candy. Sophistication, neutrality, glamour. Shell, Taupe, Opal.

It’s a colour trend that will not give up it’s chokehold on mass culture, and opening night of Woodsy Bransfield’s solo show at Neven made me nostalgic for the time when all I wanted was to beat myself (and possibly others around me) with a simple selfie stick.

The splatters would have imparted lovely sweeps of slasher crimson - a juxtapository touch of Pollock to the obvious Warhol references.

Who am I kidding, the selfie stick wouldn’t have withstood the force required to do that level of damage. The types you got from Primark back in 2015 invariably fell apart almost as soon as they came out of the packaging.

P.K 6 PACK: MISTER PAPERCUT

The idea of anonymity is like you said to create a panopticon personality. I didn’t want my particular background to affect my work or how it was perceived.

P.K REVIEW: BENJAMIN SLINGER Dungeon Inc., at Darren Flook

June 2^nd to July 8^th  

Ending soon

Benjamin Slinger’s first solo exhibition at Darren Flook, "Dungeon Inc.," is an immersive journey into a domain where socio-political events and pop culture ephemera intersect with medieval fantasy role-playing games. Slinger's collection of conceptual sculptures and wall-based works construct a complex narrative, unfolding the economic upheavals of the 1980s to the present, blurring the boundaries between personal imagination and the systems of Western capitalism, and the consequences of their disarray. 

 

The matrix of Slinger’s show is the exploration of where Neoliberalism ruptures and ultimately cannibalizes itself. 

P.K REVIEW: ANDY DIAZ Caught in the System, at OMNI gallery London.

Andy Diaz’s "Caught in the System" currently on at OMNI, is a captivating show inviting viewers into a rich and dense artistic world, where themes of identity, societal constructs, and personal narratives are explored. 

Stepping into the gallery space, one is immediately struck by the visual richness and intricate detail that characterize Diaz's artworks. The use of media, the contrasting materiality of aerosol and liquid paints, fast and slow, the simultaneous subtle and aggressive colour palates, creates tension in the canvases. Spray paint, with its graffiti and street art associations, imparts a distinctive essence of urgency and spontaneity. The works emanate a dynamic energy, infusing the defined spaces with a palpable sense of vibrancy and movement. This intermingling of colours, lines, and textures yields a harmonious discord that captivates the viewer's gaze. The boundaries of the canvas are physically honoured, the catch is the cacophony within. 

 

P.K REVIEW: Bite the Hand, at Grove Collective

Group Show ft. Patrick Quinn, Filippo Cegani, Paul Ferens, Javi Ramirez, Maggie Dunlap, Bora  Akinciturk, Malte Zenses, Victor Seaward & Noelia Towers.

Grove, Battersea.

02.06 - 08.07

 

The group exhibition "Bite the Hand" at Grove Collective delves into the enigmatic realm of duality and duplicity, showcasing artworks defined by inherent contradictions within the spaces we inhabit and ideologies we come to internalise. The complex array of entanglements ultimately faced is deconstructed with irony and sarcasm, devices which are employed by the artists in various approaches. The show takes a piercing aim at the systems and individuals that prop up and perpetuate established norms and power dynamics. The show is an exercise in pushing boundaries and seeking to unsettle accepted foundations, with a cynically subversive twist acknowledging how the art world operates and mimics such elements within society.