An Absent Presence
As two practitioners with two seemingly different practices, we are interested in the apparent commonality between us both. The concepts of absence and presence run through our primary strands of thought and realisations. The exhibition will address both the presence, and absence of the artist within the gallery setting, through modes of production which emphasise the removed act of creation, alongside a more explicitly hands on approach. Alexander Winter will adopt a continued presence in the gallery space, reconfiguring the redundant material in an performative sculptural installation.
Alex will work within the space at a set time during opening hours. The integral part of the process is predetermined in response to the environment of the gallery. Whilst some actions are set in place prior to the exhibition commencing, there will be other actions that are more spontaneous and unplanned. Questioning the performative elements of construction and deconstruction led by the sculptural anxiety of the artist.
Whereas the lens based work of Rob Bowman documents the more overlooked structures that are encountered daily by the kinetic human form. In both cases the idea of witness and the gaze of the audience is re-focused upon the present or latent subject
The structurally impressive and often gargantuan architectural forms that exist to serve a particular functionality, are in Bowman’s photographs, recorded entirely void of the humanity it exists to serve.
The processes and presences in Winters’ work are conversely opened up and exposed to the viewer, but the function or specific endeavour of the tasks undertaken remain knowable only to the artist himself.
The qualities of absence, resolution and stillness in the two-dimensional wall based work of Bowman will amplify the relatable contradiction with the actions of construction and deconstruction within Nicholas’s sculptural installations. The static expectation of sculpture gives way to sculptural anxiety in Winter's work, leading to processes of constant movement and alteration, adjacent to this Bowman’s capturing of stillness simultaneously gives new-life to an object that is still, frozen in time.