exhibition

London Craft Week

Material Beings

Hosted by: Forest + Found

Exhibition:

This exhibition has already taken place

What's On / Past exhibitions / Material Beings

Past Exhibition Information

May 10, 2023 - May 14, 2023

Lavery Studio

Forest + Found

An artist-led show pushing the conceptual nature of craft practice through a radical rethinking of materiality. The exhibition brings together artists Max Bainbridge, Chloé Rosetta Bell, Abigail Booth, Marlène Huissoud, Alida Kuzemczak-Sayer, Francisca Onumah, Frances Pinnock and Marcin Rusak.

With a common grounding in the physicality of our material world, each artist’s practice takes us beyond the corporeal into an intimate exploration of the human body and psychological condition. With works that shift between the natural and un-natural, this exhibition allows space for the materials themselves to permeate our minds and question where our sense of self ends and the physical world begins. Seeking out tactile encounters in their work, be it through the exploration of material, or the physicality of their making process, these artists explore the experience of body and object in space. Often relying on intuition in the making, or searching for a state of contemplation in connection with imagination and memory, their works exist somewhere between the real and imagined, the human and the non-human. Collectively their work acts as a physical and sensory record of the search for meaning in the overlooked and everyday details of our lives. Often embracing moments of collapse or imperfection to challenge the hierarchical nature and perceived value of the materials they choose to work with. Wood, insects and clay turn our thoughts outwards to the natural world, while the manipulation of metal, leather and textiles, draws us back into the internal worlds of the artists themselves. Ranging in scale from the monumental to miniature, each artists’ practice moves between engaging with the by-products of other processes, founds objects, and self-generated material outcomes. Each brings with them a re-imagining of past lives and encounters to create new narratives and methods of communicating in this unpredictable and fast changing world. 

Curated by studio collective Forest + Found, the exhibition will be presented as part of London Craft Week.

 

Image credit: (detail) Material Beings, London Craft Week 2023. Courtesy of Forest + Found.

This Cromwell Place exhibition has already taken place

New events and exhibitions


About the Hosts

Forest + Found

Forest + Found

Working with raw materials sourced directly from evolving rural and urban landscapes, they explore identity and place through expanded material histories and hand-work. Raw wood, textile and natural pigments are elements that ground their individual practices in a material investigation of the object and textile surface as a critical space for their interaction with the natural. Bainbridge’s exploration of the living tree reflects a need to create a grounded presence though the physicality of the sculpted object in space, while Booth’s patchworked and painted canvases delve into the internal narratives of imagination, dreams and memory, as they originate in nature. Their collective use of natural and found material is central to their work as they turn to the concept of landscape as a critical site that can occupy the realm between thought and process. A place where cultural narratives and identity can be explored through the physical act of making and their psychological exploration of the changing natural world.