Modern Forms

In his essay ‘We Are All Under the Great Wave Now’, Nick Hackworth (@nick_hackworth ) examines Douglas White’s (@douglaswhiteart ) fascination with Hokusai’s iconic print “The Great Wave” which inspired the work at the center of his current show in Dubai. While Hokusai’s work is commonly seen as “a universal, visual shorthand for the power of the ocean and natural force…The meanings of the original work are darker and nuanced…we find in the composition, three, often overlooked, low-slung fishing boats caught beneath the claw-like crest of the towering wave that is about to crash down upon them...Within the work, the great wave is an imminent threat. It is depicted, almost cruelly, at its point of maximum, gathered, kinetic energy. If the great wave must be a universal symbol it would be more accurately appropriated as a harbinger of massive threat or disruptive change, the scale of which dwarfs human agency.” It was that sense of imminence that White sought to capture in his epic sculptural work. Read the full essay at the link in bio.

“With The Great Wave (after Hokusai), White extraordinarily extends the sculptural possibilities of this strange category of found material [exploded lorry tyres] to create a work that is at once massive and yet expressively full of energy and movement… In the gallery space we approach, walk around and ultimately, under the wave. In the right, or wrong place, metaphorically speaking, we stand in the shadow of the crest, and looking up we have a profound sense of the weight of the wave, hanging, suspended above us. The rough, crenelated and in places frayed surfaces of the tyres, become the controlled chaos of a wave’s surface and protruding and dangling threads of wire, spits of water and foam.” - Nick Hackworth (@nick_hackworth ) Visit the link in our bio to read the full exhibition essay by Curator and Writer Nick Hackworth. Douglas White’s (@douglaswhiteart ) exhibition “The Great Wave,” currently on view at Leila Heller Gallery Dubai.

Fantastic preview last night with thanks to @ritachile and @mtartagency for my solo exhibition ‘Folly’. Showcasing works made over the last 10 years and celebrating the support of @modern_forms Collection during that time. Open by appointment so message me if you want to visit. #artexhibition #artcollection #artcollector #sculpture #metalsculpture #sculptureexhibition

"Island of the Fay - a duo show of works by the painter Marcel·la Barceló and sculptor Apollinaria Broche at Frieze No.9 Cork Street, London, I have curated for HdM Gallery. My thanks to the artists and gallery. Nick" On now until 14 December. The exhibition, which takes its title from an essay by Edgar Allan Poe, brings together Marcel·la’s chromatic, dreamlike figurative paintings with a collection of surreal, bronze and ceramic sculptures by Apollinaria Broche of human-sized flowering plants and diminutive, sylvan creatures. The meeting of the works by these two artists with their mutually sympathetic thought-worlds, casts the show as a portal to an otherworldly place where human and more-than-human life and the mythic seamlessly intermingle as part of a dynamic, abundant and numinous whole. Island of the Fay 28 November - 14 December 2024 HdM Gallery at Frieze No.9 Cork Street, London 📷 @reecestraw

Three favourite works at the RCA Degree Show: 1. Victor Guerin Acanthus Ascendant Recycled anticorodal aluminium 60 x 17 x 13 cm 2024 2. Beth Corey Even Tribute, Oil, acrylic and newsprint on panel 20x28cm. 3. Flaneuse du Mal I’m Here Love, I’m Not a Human, Digital video with sound 4 minutes

Talk: Today, Tomorrow: The Future of the UK’s Art Scene? Wednesday 20th March, Door from 6.30pm. Talk from 7pm-8.30pm. Modern Forms @ Floreat House, 33 Grosvenor Street, London W1K 4QU. To book attendance please email: [email protected] To celebrate and close, Tomorrow, Today, Yesterday, a group show curated by Bill Fraser of six London based artists working in sculpture, Amba Sayal-Bennett, Billy Fraser, [pɑːtɪk(ə)l], Jesse Pollock, Florence Sweeney, Grace Woodcock, Modern Forms will be hosting a informal talk and discussion ‘Today, Tomorrow: The Future of the UK’s Art Scene?’ Organised by Billy Fraser for Modern Forms - a London based collection and curatorial platform - Tomorrow, Today, Yesterday brings together six of the most innovative, young, contemporary sculptors currently practising in London. In various ways – formally, aesthetically, materially, technologically – their work pushes boundaries and develops the language of sculpture. Taking up the exhibition’s engagement with time and futurity, the talk will bring together young artworld professionals spanning multiple disciplines - artists, curators, collectors and critics - to consider the state of contemporary art at present, and crucially, to imagine the possibilities of its potential future. Panel: Billy Fraser - Artist / organiser Bella Bonner-Evans - Curator / Writer / Advisor Anna S Woodward - Artist / Residency Co founder / Curator Ema O’Donovan - Gallerist / Curator Hussam Otaibi - Founder, Modern Forms Nick Hackworth - Curator, Modern Forms

‘…it is a combination of real-life experiences and my imagination that birthed these characters. I’m also exploring this imagined reality or this alternate reality where anything can happen. I’m particularly interested in the idea of a masquerade costume because it conceals the identity of whoever is wearing it. And so, the masquerade becomes, or is, this completely different entity. And historically, there’s a lot of literature around masquerades, and the psychology of being in a mask, being concealed, and having the freedom to do things that you wouldn’t otherwise do because nobody knows who you are. (…) And so, I’m also looking into the history of spirituality and masquerading, about which lots has been written in relation to masquerade communities in Western and Central Africa, as well as this idea of being imbued or being possessed by a spirit or ancestor and becoming this other person within that process.’ The practice of Na Chainkua Reindorf (b. 1991, Ghana) intertwines painting, textiles, sculptural installations, and various other media in a world-building exercise around the histories of textiles and masquerade. The artist creates large-scale tapestries and immersive sculptural environments that explore the lineage of West African masking traditions, moulding them with contemporary materials to instigate new modes of engaging with age-old rituals. Unpicking gender, culture and becoming through these works is as important as constructing fantasies. In her ongoing body of work Mawu Nyonu, beginning in 2019, works from which have shown at the Ghana Pavillion, Venice Biennale, 2021 and then the Nubuke Foundation, Accra, Reindorf introduces us to seven fictional characters that evade easily intelligible understanding; shapeshifting skins that possess deviant qualities. Each chapter of the series unfolds a new level in the mythology, as the artist seeks to further fold out and expand upon the worlds of these figures. Reindorf sits down with Nick Hackworth to discuss the genesis of the project, and its eventual aims. Link in bio. — @ncreindorf

Congratulations to the MA students on the Culture, Criticism and Curation course at CSM who curated the latest excellent @project.credit project Loitering & Loafing! Loitering & Loafing is an exhibition event featuring MA Fine Art artists as a 2023 collaboration project for Project Credit, organized by MA Culture, Criticism and Curation in the old victorian housing, Safehouse 2. FEATURED ARTISTS Javier Areán | @javierarean Yanmeng Chen / Marble | @marbelmener Yiwei Lu / Lucas | @l1weizzz Yuqing Hou | @yuqingyy Yunting Xia | @unechaise__ Yunyi Ye | @yeahyunyi Yunze Xie / David | @david.thanks.david Safehouse 2 137 Copeland Rd, London SE15 3SN Open to All 22nd Nov: 12.00-18.00 pm - Installation, Activities, Converstations (expect the unexpected as any visitors are free to loiter and loaf about the spaces.) Feel free to bring guests and show the invitation (Poster/IG posts) upon entry! [Due to the state of the building, heat insulation may not be best equipped so dress warmly, be wary of your steps into the building and wheel chair accessibility will only be on 1st floor] Loitering & Loafing brings emerging artists and curators together in exploring the space of time and creative practices. Each artists will be presenting diffrent perspectives of time senses; nostalagia, post-memory, life and death  and so on, escapsulating their vision of the terms of “Loafing” and allowing visitors to “Loiter” around their work. PROJECT PARTNERS Project Credit; Instagram: @project.credit Website: https://project.credit/ Modern Forms; Instagram: @modern_forms Website: / UAL; Instagram: @csm_news Website: / Curators: Chih Yu Tsao / Barbie | @chih_yu_tsao | Chuyue Peng | @chuyueer | Ellie Delves | @elliedelves |Farrah F. Tansri | @321_fft | Wenhan Gao | @nenehani.g | Zhihan Ren / Luna | @hhhren6 | Ziwei Jiang / Vivi | @vivi._j.g Venue; Maverick Project Instagram: @maverickprojects Website: / - @csm_news @csm_maccc @mafineartcsm

Paris picks: Mark Rothko @fondationlv Lisa Brice @thaddaeusropac Mama Andersson @davidzwirner Joey Holder @seventeengallery at Paris+ @artbasel The Walt Disney Studios: 100 Years of Wonders and Nightmares - Paris+ Conversations

Installation shots of Tomorrow, Today, Yesterday, our Frieze week exhibition. Amba Sayal-Bennett Billy Fraser [pɑːtɪk(ə)l] Jesse Pollock Florence Sweeney Grace Woodcock Organised by Billy Fraser. Texts by Bella Bonner-Evans. Until 26 November. By appointment only. Link in bio for further info. Photos by Mirko Boffelli. @ambasayalbennett @billy_fraser @drimdvst @jessercpollock @florencesweeney @grakenstein @bellabonner @mirko_boffelli

Grace Woodcock is one of six sculptors showing in Tomorrow, Today, Yesterday, our Frieze Week exhibition. 'Through combining experimental upholstery with 3D computational design, London-based artist Grace Woodcock creates soft sculptures, wearables and furniture intended to give tangible form to gravitational and orbital forces that act upon our bodies. Positioned in dialogue with the deep past, our experience of the present and the aesthetics of speculative or retro futures, Woodcock’s practice is built upon a question: namely, what does it mean to exist on a planet that is rotating uncontrollably in space.’ Woodcock’s exhibition 23.5° at Castor Gallery runs concurrently until 18 November. Q:. How might your work be considered a reflection of our times? A: Influenced by both biology and science fiction, my practice questions what it means to have an intelligent, sensing body. My sculptures sometimes appear as extensions of the body and are designed to incarnate a bodily sensation or the memory of a feeling. My work considers our body's capacity to feel and understand itself and the conditions within which it lives - our sense of interoception (the sensation of our internal state and of the bodily processes happening within us) and of proprioception (the sensation of our body’s position and movement through space). My pieces on display in Modern Forms, ‘Whorl’ and ‘Siphon:Surround’, both stem from my research into how different organisms grow, evolve and exchange energy as they are pulled by ever-changing directional forces. These radial and vortex-like pieces are my way of trying to incarnate a sense of growth and movement; a kind of a biological quivering, a fluidity that we can feel in our inner processes and see in the world.’ From a text and Q&A by Bella Bonner-Evans @grakenstein @bellabonner

[pɑːtɪk(ə)l] is one of six sculptors showing in Tomorrow, Today, Yesterday, our new, Frieze Week exhibition. 'In describing the South-London based artistic practice that goes by the name [pɑːtɪk(ə)l] (pronounced 'particle'), words like cryptic, dynamic and multifaceted come to mind. [pɑːtɪk(ə)l]’s output is predicated on the creation of modular installation structures which are each born from an admirably in-depth research and development process akin to alchemy. At the heart of [pɑːtɪk(ə)l]’s practice lies an abstract protagonist: an enigmatic figure continuously morphing from a conductor to a receiver, a mad scientist locked in his lab. If reality is considered a construction, [pɑːtɪk(ə)l]’s practice should be understood as an attempt to build an alternative one. Taking the form of modular structures, [pɑːtɪk(ə)l]’s installations can be repeatedly disassembled and reassembled, becoming new environments built in response to the space in which they are displayed. Lacking any fixed form, each work is thus able to bend and mould the shape of reality in line with [pɑːtɪk(ə)l]’s vision at any given moment.' Q: In what ways does your practice look to the future? A: [driːm/dʌst] (pronounced ‘dream / dust’) here speaking for [pɑːtɪk(ə)l] (pronounced ‘particle’) In its aesthetic presentation, the work alludes to science fiction. One of the exhibition pieces for Modern Forms, titled [prəʊ.tə.taɪp] (pronounced ‘prototype’), was born from research into simple modularity systems. It began when I was looking for a way to contextualise x abstract sculptures within a specific environment, while allowing the surroundings to feed into the meaning of the piece. The result was a modular, adjustable structure that can be moulded into a number of forms. This inherent characteristic might unintentionally speak to futurism, for example with the idea of a transformer. By distancing the practice from myself as an individual under the title [pɑːtɪk(ə)l], I am also trying to speak to the future through attempting to ensure its longevity @drimdvst @bellabonner