Becky Beasley
25 Sep - 27 Nov 2009
© Becky Beasley
German Soup (Fritatensuppe / Fried Crepe Soup), 2009
Gelatin silver print
28.5 x 37.5 cm (framed (63 x 80 cm)
Edition: 2 (four soups in total)
German Soup (Fritatensuppe / Fried Crepe Soup), 2009
Gelatin silver print
28.5 x 37.5 cm (framed (63 x 80 cm)
Edition: 2 (four soups in total)
BECKY BEASLEY
German Soup
25 September - 28 November, 2009
Laura Bartlett Gallery is pleased to present the second solo exhibition at the gallery by Becky Beasley.
Liver Dumpling or Fried Crepe soup? Within German culture, these are classic, much loved soups and electing between them is an everyday activity. However, within the context of Beasley’s practice in general, and this exhibition in particular, such daily choices are often proposed, albeit with quiet humour, at the level of life and death. So too for Thomas Bernhard, the controversial Austrian author who Beasley took for, what she calls, her ‘bad mentor’, during the process of developing the new body of work presented in this exhibition. Within Austria, a country with a historically high suicide rate, for Bernhard at least, everyday choices such as this can become a last straw. So many actual choices must be made every day that it is not so strange to occasionally dream of fewer options.
Over recent years Beasley has, in various ways, integrated the question of choice into the production and editioning of her hand-made photographs and objects: pairs of works within an edition are exhibited simultaneously; single works contain two parts; objects relate to images without being specified as having to be collected as a pair. One is propositioned and, thus, the essential ambiguity inherent in all choices, both the epic and the everyday, is levelled out and made visible.
German Soup consists of two black and white gelatin prints of these aforementioned soups, prepared by Beasley; a series of large-scale photographic prints, Curtains I-III; the standing sculpture Glen Herbert Gold; and a large series of wall-based woodworks, Brocken I-VIII, rendered in black American walnut from one piece of timber.
In German Soup, Beasley explores her identifications with the work of Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, who in turn was fascinated by Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould. Looming in the background is the mute presence of the artist’s father. One of the things Bernhard offered Beasley was the opportunity to reintroduce into her practice a specifically theatrical element. It was in his play, ‘Der Theatermachen’, which translates into English as ‘Histrionics’ , that the two soups first make an appearance in the form of an overwrought decision. Beasley’s work mediates autobiography through literary references. Central to the exhibition are notions of the fragment, performative potential and the theatre of the absurd, alluding as much to the explicit world of the stage and staged as much as to a domestic or internal realm.
The idea of the hinge produced a way of thinking for Beasley about flexible joints, found objects and broken connections. The titles for both the curtains and the woodworks series are made from anecdotes which have been broken into 3 or 8 parts, each of which is attached as a long title to each single work. For Curtains, the anecdote is from a transcript of a filmed interview with the pianist Glenn Gould, and, for the woodworks, whose shorthand title is Brocken , from a story about a meeting with Thomas Bernhard, recounted in a scholarly essay on his work. The first person anecdotes underline a performative potential, through which each series of works become a chorus, which nevertheless attempts to speaks in one, albeit broken, voice. The use of first person citations as titles across the German Soup exhibition gives the exhibition a plurality of voices. The disconnect between the titles and the objects is intended, as is the implied violation in the requirement that the series of works be separated after the exhibition, leaving each long title floundering out of the context of the full anecdote.
The three large photographic works, Curtains were made by printing only the edges of an image of a small, pale grey curtain. Each work has been made by seaming together the two resulting photographic strips. The physical seam become a moment of reality within the work, and move position across the three works. Titled from segments of a quote by Gould upon the nature of decision-making within performance, the works hang together forming a sequence, within which each is proposed as an individual. The narrow proportions of final, framed photographs take on figurative dimensions. In fact, they are based on the width of Beasley’s father’s measurements. The curtains form a trio of hidden figures, a chorus line. Beasley here incorporates colour into her black and white photography, using pale green acrylic glass to combine colour and image without physically toning the prints.
The dimensions of the new series of woodworks, Brocken I-VIII, are based on the arm measurements of Beasley’s father. They are rendered in black American walnut wood that originates from one tree, and hang with brass hinges relating directly to human joints. As a series, they enact five single movements - choreographed with the abilities of a stiff, recently retired man in mind - followed by three further movements towards potential erasure. The titles anecdote here comes from an academic essay, in which the writer recalls meeting Thomas Bernhard. For Beasley the series develops an ongoing preoccupation with the concept of the shelf as both object and support in relation to still-life, and the notion of ‘measuring ones own grave’.
Glen Herbert Gold is a standing sculpture made from black American walnut, and green acrylic glass. Titled after the official name at death of the pianist, Glenn Gould, Beasley suggests with this work further flexibility of translation and portraiture. This is another ‘hinge’ work, the dimensions of which are based on a found diagram of an upright piano, which also feature in an ongoing series of ‘piano’ works. Four green, wood-framed screens stand upright, connected by hinges, the density of green increasing and decreasing as one moves around the object. The work is both screen and window...in the form of a portrait.
More information on the sources of the titles, as well as newly commissioned texts on this body of work, can be found in a new artist’s book, Thomas Bernard Malamud (2009).
German Soup
25 September - 28 November, 2009
Laura Bartlett Gallery is pleased to present the second solo exhibition at the gallery by Becky Beasley.
Liver Dumpling or Fried Crepe soup? Within German culture, these are classic, much loved soups and electing between them is an everyday activity. However, within the context of Beasley’s practice in general, and this exhibition in particular, such daily choices are often proposed, albeit with quiet humour, at the level of life and death. So too for Thomas Bernhard, the controversial Austrian author who Beasley took for, what she calls, her ‘bad mentor’, during the process of developing the new body of work presented in this exhibition. Within Austria, a country with a historically high suicide rate, for Bernhard at least, everyday choices such as this can become a last straw. So many actual choices must be made every day that it is not so strange to occasionally dream of fewer options.
Over recent years Beasley has, in various ways, integrated the question of choice into the production and editioning of her hand-made photographs and objects: pairs of works within an edition are exhibited simultaneously; single works contain two parts; objects relate to images without being specified as having to be collected as a pair. One is propositioned and, thus, the essential ambiguity inherent in all choices, both the epic and the everyday, is levelled out and made visible.
German Soup consists of two black and white gelatin prints of these aforementioned soups, prepared by Beasley; a series of large-scale photographic prints, Curtains I-III; the standing sculpture Glen Herbert Gold; and a large series of wall-based woodworks, Brocken I-VIII, rendered in black American walnut from one piece of timber.
In German Soup, Beasley explores her identifications with the work of Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, who in turn was fascinated by Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould. Looming in the background is the mute presence of the artist’s father. One of the things Bernhard offered Beasley was the opportunity to reintroduce into her practice a specifically theatrical element. It was in his play, ‘Der Theatermachen’, which translates into English as ‘Histrionics’ , that the two soups first make an appearance in the form of an overwrought decision. Beasley’s work mediates autobiography through literary references. Central to the exhibition are notions of the fragment, performative potential and the theatre of the absurd, alluding as much to the explicit world of the stage and staged as much as to a domestic or internal realm.
The idea of the hinge produced a way of thinking for Beasley about flexible joints, found objects and broken connections. The titles for both the curtains and the woodworks series are made from anecdotes which have been broken into 3 or 8 parts, each of which is attached as a long title to each single work. For Curtains, the anecdote is from a transcript of a filmed interview with the pianist Glenn Gould, and, for the woodworks, whose shorthand title is Brocken , from a story about a meeting with Thomas Bernhard, recounted in a scholarly essay on his work. The first person anecdotes underline a performative potential, through which each series of works become a chorus, which nevertheless attempts to speaks in one, albeit broken, voice. The use of first person citations as titles across the German Soup exhibition gives the exhibition a plurality of voices. The disconnect between the titles and the objects is intended, as is the implied violation in the requirement that the series of works be separated after the exhibition, leaving each long title floundering out of the context of the full anecdote.
The three large photographic works, Curtains were made by printing only the edges of an image of a small, pale grey curtain. Each work has been made by seaming together the two resulting photographic strips. The physical seam become a moment of reality within the work, and move position across the three works. Titled from segments of a quote by Gould upon the nature of decision-making within performance, the works hang together forming a sequence, within which each is proposed as an individual. The narrow proportions of final, framed photographs take on figurative dimensions. In fact, they are based on the width of Beasley’s father’s measurements. The curtains form a trio of hidden figures, a chorus line. Beasley here incorporates colour into her black and white photography, using pale green acrylic glass to combine colour and image without physically toning the prints.
The dimensions of the new series of woodworks, Brocken I-VIII, are based on the arm measurements of Beasley’s father. They are rendered in black American walnut wood that originates from one tree, and hang with brass hinges relating directly to human joints. As a series, they enact five single movements - choreographed with the abilities of a stiff, recently retired man in mind - followed by three further movements towards potential erasure. The titles anecdote here comes from an academic essay, in which the writer recalls meeting Thomas Bernhard. For Beasley the series develops an ongoing preoccupation with the concept of the shelf as both object and support in relation to still-life, and the notion of ‘measuring ones own grave’.
Glen Herbert Gold is a standing sculpture made from black American walnut, and green acrylic glass. Titled after the official name at death of the pianist, Glenn Gould, Beasley suggests with this work further flexibility of translation and portraiture. This is another ‘hinge’ work, the dimensions of which are based on a found diagram of an upright piano, which also feature in an ongoing series of ‘piano’ works. Four green, wood-framed screens stand upright, connected by hinges, the density of green increasing and decreasing as one moves around the object. The work is both screen and window...in the form of a portrait.
More information on the sources of the titles, as well as newly commissioned texts on this body of work, can be found in a new artist’s book, Thomas Bernard Malamud (2009).