Radical Residency III
Exhibition private view: 4 April 2019, 6 – 9pm
Exhibition dates: 5-25 April 2019
Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop is opening its doors again for the third instalment of the Radical Residency® programme following 2 successful iterations in 2018. This dynamic and innovative opportunity provides 10 artists from across the world with a communal studio space for 4 weeks, culminating in a group exhibition featuring works created on the premises. 10 places have been awarded to a multi-disciplined group of artists from 5 different countries: Tobias Becker (Germany), Sam Carvosso (UK), Sooyoung Chung (South Korea), Juliette Dominati (France), Géraldine Honauer (Switzerland), Hun Kyu Kim (South Korea), Jean-Baptiste Lagadec (France), Henry Tyrrell (UK), Lucille Uhlrich (France) and Poppy Whatmore (UK). The Solo Studio Residency, with artist ubada muti, will be running in tandem upstairs.
With issues around the ever mounting costs of studio space in London coming increasingly to the fore, this initiative not only alleviates commercial constraints but offers the additional enrichment of dialogue and exchange. The normally hushed gallery space is converted into a thriving hub of potential provocation and conversation in which the individual artists can respond and grow as they develop their own practice.
After watching the success of the first two editions, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop founder and director Stacie McCormick states that “there are so many benefits to the artists working together in such an intense way, but the one that I did not anticipate, that seems to be the strongest, is the mutual respect and support”. This time round, the exhibition length has been extended from 1 week to 3, building on the momentum of the previous editions.
Spring 2019 Radicals
Tobias Becker
By mixing elements of today’s digital reality with rudimentary analogue systems, Becker investigates collision and divergence between the past, present and future, exploring how change and progression are intrinsically linked to and enabled by the past via installation, film and photograms. He studied Time-Based Media at the Kunsthochschule Mainz, Germany, until 2018, and is currently a postgraduate student of the artist and filmmaker Rosa Barba. Besides numerous exhibitions in Germany, his works have been shown across Canada, Switzerland and Italy. He has recently been nominated for Plat(t)form 2019 at the Fotomuseum Winterhur, Switzerland.
Sam Carvosso
This artist explores the notion of creating a space, or pseudo-reality, with a particular focus on landscapes. Carvosso’s work references the collaboration between memory, nostalgia, and the media – namely Google images, films, tourist information platforms – and how they combine to create versions of the truth, occupying a stance between reality and imagination. He gained a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Sculpture at the University of Brighton, 2014, before an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London, 2017. Residencies include Yellowstone National Park, USA, and the British Council South East Research Residency, Myanmar. Carvosso was also shortlisted for Matt’s Gallery Studio Award in 2017. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions across the UK.
Sooyoung Chung
Chung explores the everyday spaces and mundane objects of contemporary life, examining how these transmit intimate details about personal taste and an individual’s context to become a form of portrait. Chung posits that whilst each individual person chooses an item to his or her preference, we all create similar relationships with products; thus the scenes in her paintings grow from a personal story into a generalised trope of “contemporary daily life”. Chung received an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2018. Recent exhibitions include Abstract: Reality at Saatchi Gallery, London, 2018 and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, 2018.
Juliette Dominati
A visual artist, performer and film & theatre director. Dominati creates installations based on the aesthetic of collage, incorporating painting, video, performance and found objects. She records the stories, memories and gestures of everyday life and recreates them with actors, manipulating the crossover between reality and fiction. Dominati graduated from the National Art School of Paris in 2017. Her first short film, ‘All the World’s a Stage’ has been shown at various festivals, and her artwork has been exhibited across galleries in France, Argentina, China and the USA.
Géraldine Honauer
A sculptor working across the boundaries between life and art, taking materials out of their original contexts by bringing them into the art world and then replacing them. She explores the temporary, intermediate moment in this cycle of transformation. Her focus is on the changing status of an object when it is given “art value”, interrogating the definition of art and the economics of the art world. She received an MFA from the University of Applied Sciences in Bern, Switzerland, 2018. Recent shows include Auswahl18, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Arau, Switzerland, 2018, and The Art of Homemaking – Claiming Space, DadaPost, Berlin, Germany, 2018.
Hun Kyu Kim
Working in the aesthetic of traditional Korean silk painting, Kim crafts precise allegorical pictures, employing a range of political, contemporary and art-historical references and influences. Through his skilled application of oriental painting, Kim builds intricate stories about an imaginary world; yet this becomes an analogy for the very real political situation in the artist’s native South Korea, combined with traditional fairy tales and folklore. Kim received his MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2017
Jean-Baptiste Lagadec
Having begun his artistic career in the realm of digital art, Lagadec has since devoted his efforts to painting, conceived by the artist as an act of resistance against a digital future of creation. His practice playfully seeks alternatives to the screen, creating tangible incarnations of the non-physical codes underlying digital image conception. His process is an autonomous machinery that calls for contradiction and reinvention, with the resulting image secondary to the process. Lagadec completed a Foundation year at Atelier de Sèvres, Paris, before receiving a BA Fine Art at Central Saint Martin’s, 2016. He completed the the Acme Associates program in September 2018.
Henry Tyrrell
Makes abstract paintings, works on paper, and painting installations that explore a connection between landscape and memory, characterised by an accumulation of interwoven, layered gestures. The works sit at the borderline between abstraction and allusions to landscape. Tyrrell received a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art, London, 2012, followed by a MA in Painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, 2018. Recent exhibitions include The Politics of Too Many Rubbish Dinner Parties, Charlton Gallery, London, 2017 (also co-curated), Imagen Vibratoria, Nahim Isaias Museum, Ecuador, 2017, and Purkinje Flying, GlaxoSmithKline, Brentford, 2014.
Lucille Uhlrich
An artist working in mixed media to create dreamlike ephemeral assemblages which incorporate fragments of materials, suspended, hung and taped into place. Uhlrich continuously explores how one thing can transform into another, how words are implied and what shapes stand for. The works are elusive and indecipherable, influenced by the artist’s native language which is now a lost dialect, interrogating the relationship between the signifier and the signified. Uhlrich studied modern literature in Strasbourg before completing an MA at the Beaux-Arts, Lyon, in 2009. She also works as a critic and essayist for French publications, art institutions and galleries.
Poppy Whatmore
Subverts and deconstructs the conventional uses of chosen objects. Whatmore transforms everyday items into animated anthropomorphic or zoomorphic forms, reconfiguring their fractured parts into surprising and playful arrangements. The artist explores the relationship between an object and its documentation, and how the latter can redefine the nature, experience and reading of the former. Whatmore has exhibited widely across the UK, won the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2013, and received an Arts Council Award 2010-12. Following her inclusion in Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011-12, her work was chosen for the Saatchi Gallery’s public collection.