8 Dec 2007 to 27 Jan 2008
Opening Hours:
Thursdays - Sundays 12 - 6pm
Space Station Sixty-Five
65 North Cross Road
SE22 9ET
London
United Kingdom
Europe
p: (0) 20 8693 5995
m: (0) 7976 601281
f:
w: www.spacestationsixtyfive.com
Opening: 7th December 6.30 - 8.30pm 2007, all welcome. Exhibition runs: 8th December - 27th January 2007, Thursdays - Sundays 12 - 6pm Closed 17th December - 2nd January Closing event: 27th January 2007 4 – 7pm, refreshments provided, all welcome Stephen Nelson will be in conversation with Jenni Lomax, Director Camden Art Centre and Bernard Walsh, Senior Tutor Department of Art, Goldsmiths University of London.
A catalogue will be available for the exhibition with texts by Bernard Walsh and Gilane Tawadros. A Space Capsule affordable edition by Stephen Nelson will be launched for this exhibition.
Nelson’s sculptural forms are busy, on the verge of frantic, composed of patterned surface over layers of other patterned surface. Their shapes continue to grow, developing into one another, occasionally touching, aimlessly interconnecting themselves to each other and to other features around the room. There is a sense that they might eventually overrun the space, like bindweed creeping through a neighbour’s fence twisting around and strangling some of the more cultivated plants. Nelson’s artwork does not seem to fit into any straightforward classification, nor does it necessarily dispose itself to subsequent explanation through words, including these words that I am writing now. In many ways its’ purpose might be to remain obtuse, to resist any obvious attempt to say what it means beside what it appears to be. And yet there are moments when it seems to cry out for our attention. It is so carefully constructed and delicately poised. Its’ gestures, pattern and motion makes us want to understand it, to empathise with it, not through any other description, or alternative statement, but through our own sense of attachment to the artworks’ own dynamic postulation, its’ independent characteristics. Bernard Walsh
Stephen Nelson was the ACE Helen Chadwick Fellow in sculpture in 1999. He has exhibited internationally; including at Whitechapel Art Gallery, The Drawing Room and Camden Arts Centre, London and The British School at Rome. He has curated two shows for The British Council in Eritrea and Tanzania. In 2006, he was part of the group show Thy Neighbours’ Ox 2 at Space Station Sixty-Five. In 2007 he was featured in the book Life is More Important Than Art edited by Gilane Tawadros.
