An exhibition of works by So-Ha Au, Alexander Bates, Alice Cunningham, Lorna Giezot, Jacqueline Morreau & Axelle Russo

Private View: 11th of April – 6 pm to 11 pm
Exhibition runs from: 11th of April to the 17th of April 2008
Gallery Opening Hours: Sat, Mon, Tues, Wed: 11.00 am – 6.30 pm
Last day of Exhibition – Thursday 17th of April: Open from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm

Second Skin brings together an engaging show of work by six painters and sculptors: Work that explores clothing and its notions of identity, the body and memories. With the artists depicting, reconstructing and referencing ‘clothing’: looking at its relationship with our bodies; how we identify ourselves and how others perceive us; provides commentary on everyday narratives; symbolises our psychological spaces; conjures and promises associative memories; and maps our absence and presence.

Alice Cunningham’s previous work has been concerned with investigating and highlighting natural processes in an attempt to describe andunderstand the cogs of our existence on a universal level.Cunningham is fascinated by the hidden and basic truths around us.The installation for this exhibition was made as a discussion of theemotional and social process of growing up, the transition into themainstream working world and understanding its substance andstructures.

So-Ha Au is interested in exploring the themes of mapping memories and the layering of time, as a way of mediating personal histories and identity.Expressing ideas of absence and displacement, tracing and retracing.She is using diagrams of dressmakers’s patterns to look at the interior spaceoccupied by the clothed body. Deconstructing the shapes, like displaced limbs.Reconstructing them again, almost as flat plans for referencing an unoccupied,internal space of the absent and displaced.

Alexander Bates: Messy Bedroom is a series of photographs or snapshots made with disposable cameras that document paintings of discarded clothingalongside their real life counterparts in situ, making the labour intensive seem casual.

Jacqueline Morreau first used a coat as a symbol of ambivalence in her 1980s series “Divided Self” but has since returned to it to symbolize thepush and pull between two women closely identified with each other:twins, rivals, mothers and daughters, friends – all searching forseparation. The idea came to her from seeing, in Camden Town, twoschoolgirls struggling to get into the same coat. As models, she used twoacrobats from Circus Space in London, whom she already knew. Theirsense of playfulness and willingness to try out many ways of ‘sharing thecoat’ encouraged her ideas.

In 1999 Lorna Giezot began a body of work which stemmed from an interest in how our relationship with clothing and the notion of dress isperceived.By removing the human form as the central structure for the clothing andreplacing it with objects devoid of gender, or any need or social purposefor dressing, she aims to approach the impact dress has on the psyche.Garments, costumes, uniforms awaken nostalgia, represent cultures, agesand races, simply by their colour, texture, age or smell.The pointless act of ‘dressing’ the shells, juxtaposing the domain ofclothing and the discarded, asexual shell, is an attempt to displace andmanipulate the specific connotations both these items exude. In doing soshe aims to encourage reflection upon what we see and how we canperceive it.

Axelle Russo started working on Burkas (Afghan Women’s outdoor veils) in 1998. “The ghost like shape of any Muslim veil is familiar to the viewer but I play with theform to raise questions about women’s identity and the clothing as a simile of thatidentity. Clothing, in any of its expressions, is a language and this hiding veil thatis supposed to mask or disguise the self becomes an identity statement. I like toplay on the paradox and conflicts raised by traditions and politics that impose aconstrained (veiled) image of women and the way the self is inevitably appearingbeyond the veil. You can see these women as victims, but also as Iconsrepresenting archetypal aspects of women’s identity and sexuality. Beyond any geographical limits, religions or race.”

For further information on the artists, please email So-Ha Au: [email protected]