PERFECTIoNISM (part III)

Griffin Gallery's annual flagship exhibition, PERFECTIoNISM (part III) – The Alchemy of Making - returns on October 4th.

The exhibition, curated by Becca Pelly-Fry, explores the ancient idea of artists-as-alchemists and through the transformative nature of contemporary artistic practice. It will feature nine London artists; from award winning sculptor, and former Natural History Museum artist in residence, Tessa Farmer, who stages tiny, winged skeletal humanoids on insect carcasses (see above), to the three-dimensional painter Piers Secunda, who makes life-sized sculptures out of industrial floor paint, the artists demonstrate how source materials can be transformed into something spectacular.

Becca Pelly-Fry says “This series of curated exhibitions has been quite a revelation for me as a curator... I feel we have hit on something really quite important… In a time when life is becoming increasingly fast paced and constantly ‘busy’, these artists take their time. They create their own set of rules, and push their chosen materials as far as possible within the parameters they have set themselves. They rage quietly against the culture of instant gratification, against ‘Instagrammable’ art, against inanity and shallow spectacle. I am proud to support them and show their work together, in this particular context.”

Other artists include Liane Lang, known for her suggestions of animacy within figurative sculpture, created by documenting and staging museum objects in her photographs, as well as creating her own lifelike sculptures, and Nikolai Ishchuck, who creates photosculptures by layering photographs with paint, lacquer and concrete to form sculptures that look like vestigial, archaeological remains.

The exhibition does not seek to be perfect, nor show perfect artists, instead, each exhibition within the Perfectionism series aims to investigate and celebrate meticulous artistic methodology and process. The first Perfectionism exhibition explored this idea in general, the second took it further, investigating repetition, and the upcoming exhibition will examine the transformation of materials. Specifically, the artists will explore how the appearance and character of source materials can be altered through innovative processes, and the resulting change of status or presence of the materials,

Perfectionism III Features the artists: Tessa Farmer, Alastair Gordon, Caroline Jane Harris, Darren Harvey Regan, Nikolai Ishchuk, Liane Lang, Neal Rock, Piers Secunda, Onya McCausland.