London Paint Club

Assembly Points

Bridget Mullen, Laurence Owen, Vanessa da Silva

9 December 2020 — 28 January 2021

Bridget Mullen Duck in Molasses (2020) Flashe and spray paint on canvas 127 × 107 cm

Gallery

PUBLIC Gallery is pleased to present Assembly Points, an exhibition of new works by Bridget Mullen, Laurence Owen and Vanessa da Silva.

Displayed across three floors of the gallery, each of the artists are exhibited within their own distinct floor, providing viewers a chance to engage with their work on an individual level while a wider dialogue unfolds between them throughout the space as a whole. Through the shapeshifting paintings of Bridget Mullen, hybrid sculptures by Laurence Owen and Vanessa da Silva’s morphing installation; the exhibition reflects on and explores the action of changing state, the notion of ‘becoming other’, a subject that pervades and prevails within each of their practices.

Dancing back and forth across the threshold between abstraction and figuration, Bridget Mullen creates mutable, liminal spaces in which half-formed shapes and figures whirl in a constant state of emerging or dissolving. The steady hum of repetition present in each of the five paintings feels like a mirage, hypnotizing us with the illusion of momentum whilst frozen in a moment. Her forms are at once strange and familiar, but always about to morph into something else. Rather than presenting the viewer with a narrative or fleshed out idea, Mullen suggests a workable space that feels as if it’s still coming into being and requires your standing before it to complete it.

Operating as enigmatic and mysterious objects, Laurence Owen’s wall-based multi-media sculptures draw on phenomenological ideas and experiences from urban and natural environments. Incorporating a range of approaches including sculpture, painting and ceramics, Owen’s hybridized compositions fold inside and outside of themselves, offering through materialistic metaphor, wider socio-political ideas around territory and border. By shifting and merging these concepts to create alternative definitions and reframe their commonly understood meanings, Owen hints at notions of these systems operating behind our daily existence. Throughout his work, a collapse between past and present occurs; futurist scenarios appear to simulate and flow into established aesthetics as an equally speculative – science fictional – realm.

Traversing the intersection between the human body and nature, Vanessa da Silva presents an expansive installation comprised of a new series of sculptures. Neither human nor part of nature, these ‘unrooted bodies’ are hybrids in a constant state of mutation, metamorphosing into something still unknown. Projecting up from a platform of glass windows, these forms of varying size punctuate the space like stalagmites and challenge perceived orientations through their reflections—alluding to the uprootedness of the present moment in which systems, institutions and ‘truths’ are caving in. The organic irregularity of these smooth white structures recalls the boned architecture of our bodies, yet they hint at something altogether different and like the external structures around us are subject to collapse.

Bridget Mullen Spillers (2020) Flashe and spray paint on linen 53 × 36 cm
Bridget Mullen Playing The Flames (2020) Flashe and spray paint on linen 51 × 36 cm
Bridget Mullen Touch Down (2019) Flashe and spray paint on linen 76 × 51 cm
Bridget Mullen To Dissolving The New Classics (2019) Flashe and spray paint on canvas 127 × 107 cm
Laurence Owen Intonation (2020) (Detail) Wood, filler, emulsion paint, sand, spray paint, wax, card 96 × 299 × 26 cm © The Artist, Image courtesy of Public Gallery
London Exhibition Guide - London Paint Club - Public Gallery Exhibition
Laurence Owen Intonation (2020) Wood, filler, emulsion paint, sand, spray paint, wax, card 96 × 299 × 26 cm © The Artist, Image courtesy of Public Gallery
London Exhibition Guide - London Paint Club - Public Gallery Exhibition
Laurence Owen SH (2020) Oil paint, acrylic paint, charcoal, epoxy putty, jesmonite, card, digital print on paper, emulsion, parcel tape, pool noodle 97 × 87 × 27 cm © The Artist, Image courtesy of Public Gallery
London Exhibition Guide - London Paint Club - Public Gallery Exhibition
Laurence Owen SH (2020) (Detail) Oil paint, acrylic paint, charcoal, epoxy putty, jesmonite, card, digital print on paper, emulsion, parcel tape, pool noodle 97 × 87 × 27 cm © The Artist, Image courtesy of Public Gallery
Installation View of Assembly Points at PUBLIC gallery, 2020 - All images courtesy of the Artist and PUBLIC Gallery.
Laurence Owen 18.11.2020 (2020) (Detail) Ceramic tile, grout, oil paint, spray paint, emulsion, sand, digital print on paper, stickers, card, plastic piping, wood, epoxy putty, vac-form acrylic 167 × 132 × 63 cm © The Artist, Image courtesy of Public Gallery
London Exhibition Guide - London Paint Club - Public Gallery Exhibition
Laurence Owen 18.11.2020 (2020) Ceramic tile, grout, oil paint, spray paint, emulsion, sand, digital print on paper, stickers, card, plastic piping, wood, epoxy putty, vac-form acrylic 167 × 132 × 63 cm © The Artist, Image courtesy of Public Gallery
Laurence Owen Z (2020) (Detail) Oil paint, acrylic paint, epoxy putty, jesmonite, card, canvas, emulsion, masking tape, pool noodle 69 × 58 × 18 cm
Laurence Owen Z (2020) Oil paint, acrylic paint, epoxy putty, jesmonite, card, canvas, emulsion, masking tape, pool noodle 69 × 58 × 18 cm
London Exhibition Guide - London Paint Club - Public Gallery Exhibition
Vanessa da Silva If We Wish To Compress Something, We Must First Let It Fully Expand #3 (2020) Polystyrene, fiber glass and acrylic compound 140 × 104 × 55 cm © The Artist, Image courtesy of Public Gallery
London Exhibition Guide - London Paint Club - Public Gallery Exhibition
Vanessa da Silva If We Wish To Compress Something, We Must First Let It Fully Expand #4 (2020) Polystyrene, fiber glass and acrylic compound 120 × 47 × 72 cm © The Artist, Image courtesy of Public Gallery
London Exhibition Guide - London Paint Club - Public Gallery Exhibition
Vanessa da Silva If We Wish To Compress Something, We Must First Let It Fully Expand #1 (2020) Polystyrene, fiber glass and acrylic compound 192 × 125 × 65 cm © The Artist, Image courtesy of Public Gallery
London Exhibition Guide - London Paint Club - Public Gallery Exhibition
Vanessa da Silva If We Wish To Compress Something, We Must First Let It Fully Expand #2 (2020) Polystyrene, fiber glass and acrylic compound 175 × 134 × 100 cm © The Artist, Image courtesy of Public Gallery

Work Enquiry