Sophie Bouvier Ausländer | Ellie Harrison | Monika Oechsler | Naomi Siderfin
Preview: Tuesday 6 October 7-9pm
7 October – 29 November 2015
Wednesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm
Open until 9pm during Frieze Week 15 – 17 October
SLAMFriday events 6 – 8.30pm
30 October: The Big Draw Workshop drawing a line between the historic and the contemporary
27 November: Process and Politics Plenary with Dr Rachel Garfield
The RRAAF Debate as part of Harnessing the Wind
Saturday 14 November, 4-6pm
More information and RSVP here.
‘Harnessing the Wind’ is a metaphor for the difficulties of capturing process: difficult but not impossible – as the image of the wind turbine embodies. Creative and political process comes together in installations that reference current affairs, whilst remaining absorbed in the languages of contemporary visual culture.
Swiss artist Sophie Bouvier Ausländer dwells on the destructive force of wind, imagining of populations being propelled by one wind of change into the eye of another storm. Barbed wire forms the structural base for Bouvier Ausländer’s sculptural work built in Beaconsfield’s Upper Gallery. The idea recalls British Prime Minster Harold Macmillan’s famous ‘Wind of Change’ address in 1960 on the subject of decolonization. www.hotelausland.com
Ellie Harrison works with political activism as her form and content. Harrison’s project-in-progress, Radical Renewable Art & Activism Fund (RRAAF) has re-imagined the renewable energy of wind power as a regenerative source of arts funding, lending literal currency to the theme. RRAAF will be publicly launched during this exhibition, with the aim of developing a pilot scheme in the artist’s home city of Glasgow in 2016/17 in partnership with the Centre for Contemporary Arts. See www.facebook.com/RRAAFund and www.twitter.com/RRAAFund and follow Ellie on @blatantselfpromotion and @ellieharrison.
By supporting Ellie Harrison’s RRAAF Kickstarter, you will become a RRAAF Founder – helping to raise awareness for the project and fund the initial scoping work in order to set up a new and autonomous alternative funding scheme for art-activist projects in the UK. Support here.
A pioneer of large-scale video installation, Monika Oechsler brings together a series of new films for Beaconsfield’s Arch Gallery. Focusing on ideologically significant architecture in Germany and Britain, the work points towards the temporal aspects of historical constructs and the shifting symbolism and politics of iconic monuments in contemporary life. www.monikaoechsler.com
In her role as artist-curator, Naomi Siderfin is interested in capturing the diverse processes and meanings embedded in creative acts of artmaking. Her own installation in the Upper Gallery references the original site that triggered the exhibition – a wind farm in Essex – through drawing and painting (in the widest possible sense).
Harnessing the Wind arrests, for the space of an exhibition, the imaginations of four artists working in a range of mediums: painting, video, sculpture, social media, sound, public engagement – and memory, and, in so doing may capture a breath of zeitgeist – spirit of our time.
Celebrating 20 years on Newport Street, Beaconsfield welcomes in the same week, new neighbours launching with a major exhibition of works by John Hoyland – ‘Power Stations’ – inaugurating Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery.
Download the Press Release here.
PRESS ENQUIRIES
Gabriela Cala-Lesina, Projects and Development Manager
gabriela@beaconsfield.p-2.biz 020 7582 6465
