PUNCH
Tuesday April 9th – Saturday April 27th 2019
Olivia Bax
The work of Olivia Bax is often characterised by familiar elements such as a hook, handle or vessel presented in unconventional, coloured forms. However, it is the texture of the surface which offers the viewer the most immediate insight. Bax generates her own paper pulp to cover and form a mantle over linear armatures. Moulding each sculpture in this way creates the distinctive texture of the work. Rooted in drawing, the work carries instinctive gestures from start to finish to suggest an action or feeling.
Olivia Bax (b. 1988, Singapore) lives and works in London. She studied BA Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London (2007-2010) and MFA Sculpture at Slade School of Fine Art, London (2014-2016). Recent solo exhibitions include: Roost, Lily Brooke Gallery, London (2018); at large, VO Curations, 93 Baker Street, London (2018) and Zest, Fold Gallery, London (2016/17). Recent group exhibitions include: Olivia Bax | Milly Peck | Rafal Zajko, Three Works, Scarborough (2018); The Ground is Good, Modern Painters, New Decorators, Loughborough (2018) and A Motley Crew, Christian Larsen Gallery, Stockholm (2017). Recent residencies include: Artist in residence at Academy of Visual Arts, HKBU, Hong Kong (2016/17); British Council INSPIRE exchange, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2015) and Presidents Fellow, Vermont Studio Centre, USA (2013). Prizes include: Kenneth Armitage Young Sculptor Prize (2016), Additional Award, Exeter Contemporary Open, Exeter Phoenix (2017) and Public Choice Winner, UK/Raine, Saatchi Gallery, London (2015). See more at www.oliviabax.co.uk
Dominic Beattie
Dominic Beattie is a London born artist who works from his studio in Lewisham.
He is a graduate of Camberwell College of Art.
Beattie’s practice encompasses painting, sculpture, drawing and design and curation. His work is known for referencing the modernist movement, and is influenced by the sensibilities of that era. Borrowing from, textiles, ceramics, furniture and graphics, Beattie creates abstract works that are a hybrid of formal and optical elements.
His ‘Studio Furniture’ range made in collaboration with the architect Lucia Buceta has been exhibited in museums and art fairs around the world since production began in 2015.
Beattie has exhibited widely and in 2015 won the UK/Raine Painting prize at The Saatchi Gallery. His work has numerous collectors, most notably The Saatchi Collection and Soho House.
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Dominic Beattie’s work is cut and built and then rebuilt, painted then overpainted. The traces of constant readjustment haunt the final image. Riffing on a wide and varied group of abstract languages that loosely come out of a constructivist history, Beattie’s eye for colour is at once direct and original. These works create surprising spatial shifts and vibrations that suggest a wink to Op and Pop but the emphasis on repetition and sequencing is also concomitant with sampled beats in advanced subcultures of electronic music. With skill and attention to the crafting of colour and shape, Beattie obsessively tilts, turns and twists the grammar of hard edged abstraction until something new and unprecedented is achieved.
John Bunker, 2017
Dominic Beattie to Olivia Bax
Punch…Rumble…Knock Out…Roar….Someone has anger issues…
Olivia Bax to Dominic Beattie
Let’s talk about PUNCH! Shall we start by talking through the downstairs space? I am still keen to have a work of mine at the entrance, hanging from the top ceiling. I am thinking it will be a very simple line, which starts from the ceiling, goes down the central atrium to a small doodle just above head height. The work will link the two spaces at Linden Hall. Like a hanging punch bag?! Are you still thinking about having a floor piece near the entrance?
Dominic Beattie to Olivia Bax
I’ve tried making prototypes of the tiled floor but I can’t seem to get it right. It looks a bit awkwardly made, which I don’t usually mind, but It’s not right for Linden Hall. So I’ve had a rethink of what I’m going to show. I’d like to expand upon the works I made last year, more chairs, fake ceramics and printed paintings, domestic and decorative vibe. It will be very colourful with a lot of punch! I might make a couple of large paintings for downstairs, I always enjoy seeing my paintings behind your sculptures so I think this is a good opportunity to jam them together. How many works are you planning on showing downstairs?
Olivia Bax to Dominic Beattie
I understand about the floor. I would still really like to show a large sculpture I made last year called Monkey Cups. It would sit nicely at the back of the space. It is also the same blue as the ceiling piece I mentioned which I am making in the studio just now. So if I had a ceiling piece on entering the space, and a large floor piece at the back, perhaps you could have 2 large scale paintings on either side of the space?
I am still keen to have the collaborative works in the window – floor/plinth/painting from you and a sculpture on top by me.
Upstairs feels more domestic to me. I think that would be a great place to explore more of those themes. I love your furniture!
Dominic Beattie to Olivia Bax
I imagine having a wall mounted shelving unit with a whole bunch of my ceramics on it. In one of the bays between columns upstairs. And a group of chairs.
I think your monoprints would be really excellent in that space, I’m not sure how many you would need? But I think they would go really nice in the same area as my ornaments.
I’ve designed a few shelving units. It’s flexible and modular, I can get the components made and show you soon.
Olivia Bax to Dominic Beattie
I think you should do the shelves, that unit sounds perfect for your ceramics. So if you had one of the bays, I could put some of my monoprints on the other walls? I am going to start a new series next week based on PUNCH and the closed fist and how we touch, lift, grab sculptures.
If you plan on showing lots of different ceramics, I think I should only show a few small sculptures on the table/shelf. Have you seen the Vide Poche steel and bronze sculptures I made last month at Lockbund Foundry?
If the display is too fussy it will distract attention away from the sculptures which are full of detail in themselves. So how about a long, thin table – something simple like ply on trestles? I like the idea of a couple of your chairs tucked under the table. My 3 bronzes positioned on top. What do you think?
Dominic Beattie to Olivia Bax
That all sounds good to me, there is definitely a skewed domesticity inherent in a lot of the work we both make.
I think the monoprints will add a good dimension to the show. A sort of classicism, and it will be nice to have a more direct representational series amongst our madness. Also the objects I’m showing are very tactile and handmade. It will create a nice relationship between them.
A table or table like object will be great alongside the chairs. Yeah do it!
Getting excited now and looking forward to the studio visits soon, let’s hope it doesn’t all change after we’ve seen each others stuff!
Snippets of conversation between Dominic Beattie & Olivia Bax between December 2018 and February 2019 in preparation for PUNCH at Linden Hall Studio.
