'straddle the
line' exhibition at A.P.T Gallery
PV: Thursday 24th April 2014 6
- 8pm
The title of this exhibition invokes the idea of a
definitive position…a line. When a line is drawn, things on one side could be
‘this’ and on the other ‘that’. A line can divide and define not just affable
neighbours, but adversaries. Descriptions such as ‘them’ and ‘us’ can emphasise
not just benign difference, but mutual antipathy. Art terms and ways to ‘read’
work likewise abound, serving to chronicle, discriminate or polarize.
The curators are proposing that the works in this
exhibition may operate simultaneously on both sides of a line; that they ‘straddle
the line’ rather than promote an allegiance.
The proposition that an artwork might inhabit
contradictory territories is not to deny the inevitability of borders and
boundaries. It is to put the primacy of such divisions into question. It is to
suggest that before cumulative knowledge and understanding documented the
visual experience into descriptive categories and critical identities, things
weren’t so certain.
To allocate distinction to these thoughts is to become
exposed to the possibility that visual sensation, which defies comprehension,
is in co-existence with contradiction and paradox.
The complexity, and yet purity of this possibility in
itself, along with exploring an alternative notion of difference, were driving
principles in the choice of work, rather than any concern for formal
consistency or a search for aesthetic comrades.
Featuring:
Rana Begum, Katrina Blannin, Caroline de Lannoy,
Catherine Ferguson, Alexis Harding, Mary Maclean, Jo McGonigal, Simon Morse,
Covadonga Valdes, Ben Woodeson
Curated by Catherine Ferguson & Della
Gooden
Art in Perpetuity Trust,
Harold Wharf
, 6
Creekside,
Deptford,
London SE8 4SA
