exhibition

United We Fall

Artists Mark Pearson, Annie Whiles

23.May.08 - 21.Jun.08
Wed-Sat 12-6

Standpoint Gallery
45 Coronet St
London N1 6HD
020 7739 4921
standpointgallery@btconnect.com
www.standpointlondon.co.uk
Tube Old Street, Liverpool Street, Shoreditch / Hoxton

Mark Pearson’s large-scale drawings and dubious DIY assemblages are often brutal and muscular assertions fusing established artistic codes with vulgar or vernacular references. He invests redundant symbols of urban mythology, typical of pub interiors, street signs and public memorial sculptures with new-found energy and power through his layered, lush and intensely worked surfaces, which act almost as the subconscious of the sign. Pearson juxtaposes genuine delight in reworking these anachronistic motifs with the knowledge that they reveal a subculture still hanging onto spurious assertions of homogenous identity, masculinity and historical authenticity. For Standpoint, Pearson presents new drawings, sculptures and revolutionary party posters that fuse the affiliation codes of the DIY disciple, the Masonic Lodge and amateur craft enthusiast.

Mark Pearson completed his MA at Goldsmiths College in 2000 and has shown widely in the UK and internationally since then. Recent exhibitions include Intoposition at Bauernmarkt1, Vienna, Drunken Boat, Colony, Birmingham; Circle of the Tyrants, a Moot curated project at Southwell Artspace, Nottingham (all 2007) and Metropolis Rise: New Art from London, curated by Anthony Gross and Jen Wu, CQL Design Center, Shanghai, 2006.

Annie Whiles is known for her oversized embroidered badges and honed line-drawings of carefully placed objects that translate the figurative into the emblematic image or object. Central to her act of interpretation is the paring down of reality to a metonymic emblem - the haecceity of the object, its unique it-ness and intensity, transforms the ordinary into the talismanic object or extraordinary event. For Standpoint, Whiles will be revealing a diverse selection of new pieces including Not Yet, a film of a ritual involving Whiles’ beloved dog Bob being tempted into the afterlife by a sextet of angels; a new sculptural embroidery based on her research into military mascot goats and their embroidered coats; and a series of stamps that commemorate instances of talking bushes and plants, who administer advice and wise words.

Annie Whiles is a lecturer in Fine Art Practice at Goldsmiths College. Her solo show Cuckoo was at Danielle Arnaud and Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool in 2007. Recent group exhibitions include Traditional Skills, New Thinking, Bury St.Edmunds Art Gallery; Textile Transporter, Art Transponder, Berlin; Metropolis Rise, New Art From London, Shanghai and Beijing, 2006; Janus, Cafe Gallery, Southwark Park, London, 2006; Cloud & Vision, Museum of Garden History, London, 2005; Death is Part of the Process, Void Gallery, Derry, Northern Ireland, 2005