somamexico.org

April - May

Hannah Rickards

Working in video, sound and text, Hannah Rickards’ work deals with the translation of natural phenomena into formalised language. Her works have explored the verbal descriptions of the sound of the Northern Lights (...a legend, it, it sounds like a legend..., 2007) and accounts of images seen as a result of mirages on the Great Lakes (No, there was no red, 2009). In Thunder(2005), working in collaboration with the composer David Murphy, she reconstructed the sound of a thunder clap using six musical instruments.

Hannah Rickards  was born in London where she lives and works. In 2008 she was the recipient of bi-annual Max Mara Art Prize for Women in conjunction with the Whitechapel; she has also had solo exhibitions at Pawnshop Gallery, Los Angeles (2005) and The Showroom, London (2007). Recent group exhibitions include The Object of the Attack, David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2009);Chasing Napoleon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2009); The Quick and the Dead, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2009) and Nought to Sixty, ICA, London (2008).

Hannah Rickards was selected to do a six week residency at SOMA, Mexico City within Gasworks' International Fellowship Programme.

More information: www.gasworks.org.uk

Hannah Rickards'…a legend, it, it sounds like a legend…' Installation view, The Showroom, 2007

Hannah Rickards, still from No, there was no red., 2009

January

Fiona Connor, Louise Menzies, Sanné Mestrom & Kate Newby

Whenever it starts is the right time is an independent and open-ended project by four New Zealand and Australian artists: Fiona Connor, Louise Menzies, Sanne Mestrom & Kate Newby. From the initial proposition to spend one month working together in Mexico City, Whenever it starts is the right time has become a collective platform designed to draw on and generate further the shared interests and existing conversations within the work of these artists, and the possible connections with specific influences present in DF.

Working across a range of media – including installation, drawing, film, sculpture, performance and print material – Connor, Menzies, Mestrom and Newby all share an interest in the local; in the potential of direct surroundings and experiences. Often working site-specifically, and drawing on social histories, the ability to work in-situ is an important and generative basis within each artist’s work and forms the starting place for their time in Mexico.  

Following their residency with Soma, the artists’ plan to produce an artist book and exhibition at Gambia Castle, Auckland. www.gambiacastle.net.  

Fiona Connor

Connor re-creates physical situations where the viewer has to literally re-negotiate how they relate to place. Driven by the specificity of functional things, Connor treats spaces, situations and objects uniquely by quoting them directly or through replication. Fieldwork is an important part of her research. Utilizing a pre-existing visual language, often the architecture of information, and respecting an object’s inherent logic, Connor constructs, remakes or echoes on a one-to-one scale, in ways that ‘quote’ rather than copy an original. Connor sometimes refers to these constructions as ‘drawings’ that redirect the viewer to the modestly fascinating, infinite detail of their surroundings.

Recent solo exhibitions include: The Blackwelder Show curated by Chris Lipomi and Mieke Marble, Los Angeles (2009); The Future is Unwritten curated by Laura Preston, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington (2009); Something Transparent (Please Go Round The Back), Michael Lett (2009; Notes of half the page, Gambia Castle, Auckland (2009). 

Louise Menzies

The work of Louise Menzies broadly investigates the social and political conditions of images and events, employing media strategically to open up specific readings in specific contexts over time. From an invitation to experience a balcony at dusk (Balcony piece, 2009), or the newspaper headline ‘History loses its appeal’ redistributed as a postcard within a university library (Gut feeling, 2009), to a film showing a book being thrown into a river (Lost Arrangement 2009), her work includes event-based projects along side object making, photography and writing, that together look to rework relations between the practical and the ideal, and the individual and the collective.

Recent projects include: Move your arms in circles, Gambia Castle, Auckland (2009); Another Way There, TCB, Melbourne (2009; Break, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (2008); Mushroom Magazine Tribute (with Warren Olds), Artspace, Auckland (2008); Shelter or Marquee, Enjoy, Wellington (2007). 

Sanne Mestrom

Conceptual photography and sculptural interventions form odd juxtapositions in Mestrom’s works, bringing together psychological and material concerns: a solid medium appears languid, like a sagging or slumped person leaning against a wall; gum spat on the pavement becomes the inverted constellation of a private universe; the edge is a vertical line in space or a series of vertical lines tearing into a page; a point is physical co-ordinate + a good place for an argument; horizontal gravity pulls her along, slowly. Mestrom’s work explores the liminal spaces that harbor instability, uncertainty and doubt. She examines these themes via a questioning of space (both physical space and socio-cultural space), and materiality (pushing or transforming the properties of found/constructed objects to/beyond their physical limits).

Recent exhibitions include: Things Fall Down. Sometimes We Look Up, Chalk Horse Gallery, Sydney, (2009); Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne, (2008); An ideal for living, Linden Gallery, Melbourne (2007); A history of space is the history of wars, Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington (2007).

Kate Newby

Kate Newby’s material is her immediate environment - language, objects, architecture and personal relationships are combined to create sceanarios from quotidian situations in the places she occupies and the actions involved in making her work. Often working with peripheral sites inside and outside of the gallery, Newby intervenes with the physical fabric of her chosen location to generate conversations that pull, direct and expand the viewer’s attention beyond conventional art viewing. Drawing out both the physical and poetic attributes of her materials Newby’s work visualises an encounter and forefronts action - collapsing and confusing the lines between process and product, doing and documentation.

Recent exhibitions include: Show me, don’t tell me: Witte de With curated section, Brussels Biennial 1, Brussels (2008); Thinking with your body, Gambia Castle, Auckland (2008); Academy, TCB, Melbourne (2008); and Many directions, as much as possible, all over the country, 1301 PE, Los Angeles (2008).