15th January � 15th February 2008, Thursday � Sunday 12 - 6pm Preview: Wednesday 14th January 2008, 7 � 9pm
For Studio Voltaire, Simon Bedwell will present an exhibition of new works in a large-scale gallery installation. Known for his manipulated found poster works, Simon Bedwell�s new work takes the form of a series of smaller spaces - a wall of painted posters; nominal interiors constructed using furniture, ceramics and found ornaments; and a storeroom.
In the past Simon Bedwell has contrasted conflicting aesthetics and text, adding slogans and phrases to found posters, creating abstract statements with disparities between subject-matter and meaning. He has also made an exhibition in which the viewers' experience was dictated by gender. With The Asphalt World, these impulses combine, as Bedwell brings the outside in, inviting a closer look at some fundamental truths regarding our everyday interactions with the world and its objects.
With this new installation, posters become a single environment, as a swathe of white fashion models stare blandly out from between drips of paint: wallpaper, but for outside. Their oozing, blank faces make a glutinous introduction to the implied inhabitant of the department store-cum-bachelor-pad which follows, where further anonymous faces meet furniture, paintings and ornaments with a patina of time, previous ownership, and an uncertain sense of history. Often the materials that form the work combine to create an atmosphere of disappointment; an overwhelming sense of the underwhelming. The posters and paintings, along with items often found in care homes, or with an unclear purpose and value, interrupt an otherwise potentially common domestic surrounding, injecting a banal sense of the uncanny.
Included in the exhibition are a series of ceramics that have been made by the artist. These handcrafted, empty vessels gamely attempt to represent an organic, ambiguous form relating to the female figure, but with a somewhat malformed or imperfect outcome. In some respects these new works, along with the installation, make reference to such figures as Allen Jones and Tom Wesselmann � a seemingly unfashionable or outmoded masculine outlook.
Simon Bedwell lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions and projects include: The Receivers, MOT International, London (2007); The Furnishers, White Columns, New York (2007); Gents: A melodrama in two acts, Platform, London; The Adverts, Ritter/Zamet at Rental Gallery, Los Angeles; Ritter/Zamet, London (All 2005). Recent group shows include: Bring The War Home, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York; (2006); �Post No Bills�, White Columns, New York (2005); Becks Futures, ICA, London; Galleon and other stories, Saatchi Gallery, London, (both 2004.)
Bedwell was a founding member of the now defunct collective BANK, an important counterpoint to the yBa�s of the London art scene in the 1990s, (Cat. �BANK� 2000, Black Dog, London).
The Asphalt World is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and Goldsmiths College. Simon Bedwell would like to thank The Elephant Trust for recent support.
Forthcoming exhibitions at Studio Voltaire:
Cathy Wilkes April � May 2009 (dates to be confirmed) A new Studio Voltaire commission, supported by The Henry Moore Foundation
Nairy Baghramian Summer 2009
First solo presentation in the United Kingdom, as a part of The International Residency Programme, in partnership with Berlin Senate, Department of Science, Research and Culture and the Whitechapel Gallery, London.
