28September–24 October 2012
Fish and Coal Building
Granary Square, Off Goods Way
London, N1C 4AA
The Genesis Foundation is delighted to present the first solo exhibition in the UK by London-based Spanish artist Greta Alfaro. The exhibition, curated by Flora Fairbairn, presents two video works and a series of photographs in the Fish and Coal Building, a semi-derelict Grade II listed Victorian site.
Central to the exhibition is a projection showing a video piece filmed by a rat in the building. Equipped with a specially created camera device attached to a harness, the rat captures through its lens a group of Edwardian office workers as they go about their daily business.
A second corresponding installation shows footage recorded by the rat inside a miniature rodent-scale recreation of a similar office space.
The exhibition reflects the artist’s acute interests in public versus private identity, and the contrast between aspects of the self we identify with as a society, versus the darker, more hidden side.
In 2011 Alfaro graduated with distinction with a Masters in Photography from the Royal College of Art, where she was the first beneficiary of the Genesis Photography Scholarship. The exhibition is the culmination of the Foundation’s ongoing support of the artist.
The exhibition’s lowly-lit and empty rooms reflect the building’s awkward and ghost-like presence. In an area which now bustles with life, the Fish and Coal Building has an outdated and silent presence that belongs to another time.
Alfaro was born in 1977 in Pamplona in Spain. She studied Fine Art at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia and Photography at the Royal College of Art, London. Alfaro has exhibited individually at Invención, curated by Andrea Paasch, Museum Ex Teresa Arte Actual, México City (2012); ELOGIO DE LA BESTIA. CENTRO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO HUARTE, Pamplona, Spain (2010), and In Ictu Oculi, curated by Antonia Gaeta, Carpe Diem Art & Research, Lisbon, Portugal (2009). Group shows include Whitechapel Open at the Whitechapel Gallery in London (2012); Bêtes off at La Conciergerie in Paris, (2011); Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2010 at the ICA London; Drama, Baby, Drama at Kunsthaus Essen, Germany, (2012), and Inanimate Beings. Inéditos at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, (2011). Her video work has also been screened at the Rencontres Internationales at the Pompidou in Paris (2010) and at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2011). In 2011 the artist received the CAM art prize, Spain.
The Genesis Foundation is a UK-based charity, established in 2001 by John Studzinski. The foundation works with its partner organisations—LAMDA, the Royal College of Art, the Royal Court, The Sixteen, Welsh National Opera and the Young Vic—to nurture artistic excellence in the fields of music, theatre, dance and the visual arts. For more information about the Genesis Foundation visit www.genesisfoundation.org.uk.
The Genesis Photography Scholarship at the RCA is offered to a first-year student biennially. For more information about the partnership between the Genesis Foundation and the Royal College of Art, click here.
Flora Fairbairn is an Independent Curator and art advisor. Recent projects include Havana Cultura, an exhibition of emerging Cuban artists in Havana, Cuba (May 2012) and an exhibition about Ephemeral Art at La Casa Encendida in Madrid (Nov 2010). In 2010, she co-directed and co-curated for the second time the art and music festival “Concrete and Glass” in Hoxton, London. She works as an art advisor for a number of collectors and sits on boards and committees such as the Future Contemporaries Committee for the Serpentine Gallery of London.
The exhibition will run from 28 September–24 October 2012. Open Monday–Friday. 11–19h; Saturday–Sunday, 12–17h. It will be held at the Fish and Coal Building, Granary Square, Off Goods Way, London, N1C 4AA.
The exhibition is being supported by King’s Cross. The Fish and Coal Offices, which were built in the 1850s and 1860s, provide a fitting backdrop to the artwork and an innovative temporary use of the building which will in due course be brought back into use once again, as offices and studios with restaurants on the ground floor as part of the King’s Cross development.
For press information, contact: Nigel Rubenstein, T +44 (0) 7968 757 436, nigel.rubenstein [at] gmail.com
