Nascent States: Olivia Plender, Mathilde ter Heijne, Renate Lorenz/ Pauline Boudry, Chiara Fumai, Ju
The Nascent State is a term derived from the Latin phrase status nascendi, or in the state of being born. Understood in science as a highly reactive molecular phase before bonding, the nascent state has also been adopted by sociologists to discuss the psychological process of reorganization. This concept was first defined by Francesco Alberoni, who saw similarities between massive collective movements and love relationships, wherein individuals bond with other persons in a high degree of solidarity.
A state is a condition of a specific time, and like the artworks in an exhibition, maintains autonomy, with the potential to extend when brought together with others. In the exhibition, nascent forms are evoked yet uncategorised, and together the subjects might create what has been referred to as a matrixial borderspace.
Artworks allude to enclosures under duress from various political systems of governance or social constructions. The absurd and irony are sometimes used to reflect the extreme conditions of current precariousness, wherein one is at the expense of another - a reaction at the hand of today’s financial mysticism, when idealised modes of self-organisation, individual liberty and communal egalitarianism become moving contradictions. Foregrounding the body, the artists remind viewers of increased social divisions and distance from modes of reproduction as they take up unresolved questions posed by feminist movements.
Olivia Plender
Honey Makes Money Makes Honey, hand woven wicker beehive, 2012
Britannia Receiving Her Newest Institution, hand embroidered banner, 2012
Mathilde ter Heijne
Experimental Archaeology: Ontology of the In Between, 2014
Sculpture, wood fired ceramic, flight case, fluorescent tubes
Chiara Fumai
The Return of the Invisible Woman (Visites fantastiques de Vito Acconci au Pays du fouet), collage and embroidery on Sacher-Masoch's 'Venus in Furs', wall painting, 2014
Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčova
Politiques de l'amitie, to-be-performed sculpture, book by Jacques Derrida, hand-cut into confetti, dimensions variable, 2012
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz
Charming for the Revolution, 11 minute looped video, 2009
Judith Barry
A passage from …Cairo stories, audio/ video intervention 2011
Oreet Ashery
Why does he make work?, video, 2008
Olivia Plender lives and works in London and Stockholm and has exhibited worldwide. Her practice varies from graphic novels to drawing, performance, video and installation. Recent solo exhibitions include: Rise Early, Be Industrious at MK Gallery, Arnolfini Gallery and CCA, Glasgow; Aadieu Adieu Apa (2009), Gasworks, London; Information, Education, Entertainment (2007), Marabouparken, Stockholm and The Folly of Man Exposed or the World Turned Upside Down (2006) at Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt.
Selected group exhibitions include: El Teatro Del Mundo, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2014); The Crime Was Almost Perfect, Witte de With, Netherlands (2014); Arbeidstid, Henie Onstad, Oslo, Norway (2013); Folkestone Triennial, Folkestone (2011); British Art Show 7 Nottingham Contemporary and Hayward Gallery (2011); Newspeak: British Art Now, Saatchi Gallery, London (2011); Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan (2010); Altermodern: Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2009); Art Now Live, Tate Britain, London (2007); Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2006); Romantic Detachment, PS1/ MoMA, New York, USA (2004).
Mathilde ter Heijne lives and works in Berlin and studied at the Stadsacademie, Maastricht and the Rijksacademie, Amsterdam. From 2004 to 2005 she lived in New York on a P.S.1 studio grant financed by the Berlin Senate.
She has presented numerous solo exhibitions at international institutions such as Currents, Beijing (2007), the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2006), and the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2005). Group exhibitions she has participated in include Female Trouble (Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, 2008), Made in Germany (Sprengel Museum Hannover, kestnergesellschaft, and Kunstverein Hannover, 2007), the 4th Seoul International Media Art Biennale, Shanghai Biennale (both 2006), and A Greater New York (P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 2005). Centre Pompidou, and Freud Museum.
Chiara Fumai lives and ‘unworks’ in Milan. Her practice begins with performance, where she becomes a medium for radical figures of the past, and (mis)interprets their stores to question both meaning and representation. Fumai’s performances are often transformed into other media, such as installations, videos, sound, collage, embroidery, and experimental self-portraiture.
Recent one-woman-shows include Der Hexenhammer, Museion, Bolzano, 2015; With
Love from $inister at A Palazzo Gallery, Brescia, 2013 – 2014; С любовью от $инистера at Victoria Gallery, Samara, 2014; I Did Not Say or Mean 'Warning', Fondazione Querini Stampalia, 2013.
Recent group exhibitions and performances have been presented at David Roberts Art Foundation, London, 2015; CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, 2015; Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2014; De Appel Arts Center, Amsterdam, 2014; Nottingham Contemporary, 2014; Fiorucci Art Trust, London, 2014; Stigter Van Doesburg, Amsterdam, 2014; MUSAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, 2013; Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, 2013; Muzeon, Moscow, 2013; dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, 2012; Studio Voltaire, London, 2014; Nomas Foundation MACRO Testaccio, Rome, 2011.
Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčova have been working together since 2000. They graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and currently they live and work in Prague and Berlin.
Chişa & Tkáčová’s solo exhibitions include Clash! at Art In General New York, Performing History, the Romanian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (with Ion Grigorescu), How to Make a Revolution at MLAC Rome, and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Their work has been exhibited widely, including at Thyssen-Bornemisza Contemporary Vienna, ZKM Karlsruhe, Christine König Vienna, The Power Plant Toronto, Migros Museum Zurich, Zacheta Warsaw, and MUMOK Vienna. In the UK, they took part in Arrivals at Turner Contemporary, andArtist Film International at Whitechapel Gallery.
Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz live and work in Berlin, and have collaborated since 1998. Their work often revisits materials form the past, usually photographs or films, referring to and excavating unrepresented or illegible moments of queerness in history. These works show embodiments, which are able to cross different times, but also draw relations between time to reveal possibilities for a queer futurity.
Recent solo exhibitions include Journal Notes from Backstage, Marcelle Alix, Paris, 2014; AFtershow, CAPC, Bordeaux, 2013; A Toxic Play in Two Acts, South London Gallery (curated by Electra), 2012; Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers
(Paris Triennale), 2012; Swiss off-site Pavilion, as part of Chewing the Scenery, Venice Biennale, 2011; Contagieux! Rapports contre la normalité, Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva, 2010; Normal Work, Les Complices, Zurich, 2010.
Judith Barry lives and works in New York. Barry studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and received an MA in Communication Arts, Computer Graphics, from the New York Institute of Technology in 1986. She trained in architecture, art, literature, film theory and computer graphics and her work encompasses a number of disciplines including performance, installation, film and video, sculpture, photography and new media.
Barry has exhibited in many international contexts, including at Documenta XIII, Sharjah Biennial 10, Cairo Biennale 2001, Venice Biennale of Architecture 2000, Sao Paulo Biennale 1994, Nagoya Biennale 1993, Carnegie International 1992, Whitney Biennale 1987. In 2000, Barry won the Federick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts and was awarded Best Pavilion at the Cairo Biennale. A major survey of her work was mounted at DA2 Salamanca, Spain, 2008 and Berardo Museum, Lisbon 2010.
In London, Barry’s solo exhibition Public Fantasy at the ICA in 1991 was curated by Iwona Blaszick, and was accompanied by a publication of a collection of the artist’s essays. Barry was also represented in Performing Bodies at Tate Modern, 2000, and A Short History of Performance at Whitechapel Gallery, 2006.
Oreet Ashery lives and works in London. Unorthodox, multi-layered and eclectic, Ashery’s expansive body of work confronts ideological, social and gender constructions within the fabric of personal and broader contemporary realities. She mines counter-culture aesthetics and traverses photography, video, mass- produced and unique artefacts, text, commissioned music, and performance. Her recent projects include Party for Freedom, presented in venues across London with Artangel, and The World is Flooding at Tate Modern.
She has exhibited and performed extensively at international contexts such as ZKM Karlsruhe, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Brooklyn Museum, Overgaden Copenhagen, DEPO Istanbul, Whitstable Biennale. Oreet Ashery is the 2015 Fine Art Fellow, Stanley Picker Gallery.
