Talk on thursday evening , 6pm, in the gallery space.
Substance is a group that explores materiality in 21st century art. Material works produced since the 1970s carry deeper intentions that are inevitably read into the time it was produced, or
the context in which it the object is placed. One can no longer view a minimalist sculpture, and consider it purely for its formal qualities. The postmodern agenda almost demands that substantial meaning be applied to material objects. It is difficult to consider a formal artwork in post-modern art, and not engender conceptual or narrative concerns. The exhibiting artists are concerned with materiality and abstraction and apply a deeper substance to their work, either through their process or by implying a reading onto the work.
Each artwork carries within it its own formal aesthetic. In modernist thought it could be viewed as a purely formal work. However on further consideration, one could argue that the materiality of these works in Substance is linked through context. By placing them together we question the nature of their formality, and the bearing that each work has on the others in the space. Substance proposes that when we observe these substances together, the postmodern condition, born of an age of digital and artificial ambiguity, is programmed to read these artworks as more than merely formal. Substance is beyond mere materiality, it is an exploration of today’s insistence for concept and narrative. This show aims to provoke questions in the viewer – are these works purely material, or is there substance to them?
