Judith Hopf
Testing Time
Benjamin Senior
12 October–14 December 2013
Preview: 11 October, 6:30–8:30pm
Studio Voltaire
1a Nelsons Row
London SW4 7JR
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday noon–6pm
and by appointment
info [at] studiovoltaire.org
Gallery 1:
Judith Hopf, Testing Time
Studio Voltaire presents a new film commission by Judith Hopf together with a series of sculptural works, made specifically for the exhibition. This exhibition is the artist’s first solo show in a UK public gallery.
Hopf’s work focuses on how our social environments shape us, influence us, and by extension thereby exclude us from ourselves. Hopf uses a wide variety of techniques such as sculpture, installation, film and performance, often engaging subjects and materials that can be found in the immediate environment.
Following on from her commission for Frieze Film, Some Ends of Things (2011), depicting an egg-person wandering around the hallways of a modernist building, Hopf’s new work will also take the architecture of a modernist home as its context. Here Hopf will recreate a narrative from the suffragette film Le Bateau de Léontine (1911) in which a girl is shown in the rebellious act of flooding her family home, sailing a toy boat in the floodwater, apparently oblivious to the resulting chaos around her. The pleasure taken in this rebellious action reinstates the power of the individual to open a gap in social hierarchy. Contrasting elements of a pristine modernist architecture and free-flowing water merge in the space of the film. Staging her work in a domestic environment Hopf powerfully conveys how emancipatory possibilities of desire and action may be pent up, waiting to brim over in the most everyday scenarios.
Hopf (b. 1969, German) is based in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples (2013), Kunsthalle Lingen, Lingen (2013), Malmö Konsthall, Malmö (2012) and Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2012). Hopf participated in last year’s dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel and is represented by Kaufmann Repetto, Milan.
This exhibition is a part of Not Our Class, Studio Voltaire’s programme of commissions and education projects that through research and practice take the work of Jo Spence as a starting point for investigating the legacy and potentials of her work in relation to contemporary culture.
Supported by The Henry Moore Foundation, Outset Contemporary Art Fund and Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen
With kind assistance from the Judith Hopf exhibition circle:
Louise Clarke, Peter Currie & Alex Zachary, Kaufmann Repetto, Milan, Valeria & Gregorio Napoleone, Stephan Tanbin Sastrawidjaja, Russell Tovey and Thea Westreich Wagner & Ethan Wagner
Gallery 2:
Benjamin Senior
For his first solo exhibition in a London public gallery, Benjamin Senior will present a new body of paintings. Senior’s figurative paintings typically depict women engaged in sport or exercise. Recent works have featured a formal play of rhythms, false symmetries and colour relationships. This sense of play continues within the frame of the picture as athletic figures and the patterned interiors or landscapes they occupy fuse into one with the flat surface of the painting. There is a voyeuristic aspect to Senior’s work as viewers become self-consciously aware of the action of their own gaze.
Benjamin Senior (b 1982, UK) is based in London and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2010. He has had solo exhibitions at James Fuentes LLC, New York (2013), BolteLang, Zurich (2012) and Jerwood Project Space, London (2006).
Sponsored by SIMONE
Offsite:
Studio Voltaire will be participating in Sunday Art Fair, 17 to 20 October, with a two-person presentation by Anthea Hamilton and Ella Kruglyanskaya.
www.sunday-fair.com
Studio Voltaire
Studio Voltaire stages a renowned programme of exhibitions, performances, events and offsite projects as well as providing affordable studios for artists. Recent commissions and projects include Phyllida Barlow, Nairy Baghramian, Alexandra Bircken, Spartacus Chetwynd, Thea Djordjadze, Nicole Eisenman, Intoart, Henrik Olesen, Elizabeth Price, Charlotte Prodger, Richard Slee, Jo Spence, Hayley Tompkins and Cathy Wilkes.
Studio Voltaire is core funded by Arts Council England.
