Graham Hudson
30 Sep - 10 Nov 2012
© Graham Hudson
The MacGuffin, 2012
plaster board, timber, wheels
300x200x120cm
Installation view at Monitor, Rome.
The MacGuffin, 2012
plaster board, timber, wheels
300x200x120cm
Installation view at Monitor, Rome.
GRAHAM HUDSON
The MacGuffin Sculpture
30 September - 10 lNovember 2012
Three years on from his last solo show with us and following his study-residence at Rome’s Macro earlier this year, Graham Hudson returns to Monitor’s white space and to the discipline of the ‘artistic object’. Hudson has always been captivated by the dynamics of the urban space, investigating cities such as London or Rome by penetrating the mesh of their connective tissue through the operative system of his temporary office, from which every change and development of the place in question is dutifully registered and filed.
This English-born artist’s projects – including the recent commission by Film and Video Umbrella in London that culminated in a solo show at the Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth – combine the city’s materials and communication, reinterpreting the urban psychology as it evolves over time.
Hudson turned his attention towards propaganda posters in 2007, during his first trip to Rome. Widely used as a means of communication throughout central and southern Italy, this strongly rooted phenomenon developed with the first elections held in the country after the Second World War. Towards the end of the 1970s, as the number of political parties proliferated and posters continued to be used as adverts for a broad variety of cultural events such as concerts and exhibitions, this vehicle literally ballooned in the 1980s. In the transient work The controlled risk of an undetermined process, one wall of the gallery has been entirely pasted with a myriad of posters ranging from political propaganda to general information on the city. The wall will remain in place from the month of August for the entire duration of the exhibition. The layering of the posters on the wall corresponds also to a linguistic stratification that reveals a system in movement. One whose end result, both in terms of content and physical form, is unknown as the sculpture evolves during the course of the exhibition towards an unclear ending.
In Two diagonal lines bisecting an unknown area a video documents the skyline, a cityscape of metal lattice propping up a crumbling façade with the towering crane of a construction site. The silhouette of a crane thrusts skywards, its two booms converging like the double line of fumes left by a passing aircraft. A quasi-transformation of a vision of the real world into a two-dimensional X drawing rendering in which the unknown variant of potential and infamy is lost in the blue of the sky.
The body of works presented at the gallery prompts the viewer to dwell on how, over time, cities and art are influenced and transformed. The use of industrial materials and equipment such as metal shelving, safety helmets, cement, measuring rods, hammers or sprit levels is intended to convey how techniques and artistic creative processes are applied to the city in response to its inputs, and to reveal how the human and artistic condition is profoundly conditioned by them.
Hudson’s method and modus operandi, as well as his attention to presentation, are constantly evolving. At Monitor the need to investigate the sculptural aspect of his work is expressed through drawings, video and performance. The MacGuffin Sculpture is therefore made up of works that confront the viewer with the state of entropy, impermanence and precariousness of constantly changing political and artistic values.
Graham Hudson (1977, lives and works in London). Selected Solo Show: 2012: ASPEX, Portsmouth, UK, MACRO, Rome, 2011: Arthouse, Austin Texas, 2010: Zingerpresents, Amsterdam, 2009: Monitor, Rome, 2008: Jan Cunen Museum, Oss, Netherlands, Locust Projects, Miami. Selected Group Shows: 2012: ‘Our Mutual Friend’, Film Video Umbrella, London ‘Now I lay my hat down to eat’, Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, Netherlands, ‘Bouvard & Pecuchet’s Compendious Quest for Beauty’, The David Roberts Foundation, London, ‘The Response’, Sunday Painter, London. 2011: ‘Con Amore – Djurhuus Collection’, ARoS, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, ‘An extended exhibition for a transition function’, Hilary Crisp, London, ‘Proxy Or’, Seventeen, London, 2010: ‘Glow’, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, ‘Newspeak’, Saatchi Gallery, London, ‘Languages and Experimentation’, Mart, Rovereto; ‘Mutiny seemed a probability’, Fondazione Giuliani, Rome; 2009: ‘Points and Lines’, LMCC, New York; “Space Rivised#3”, Halle fur Kunst, Leuneburg; “Ctrl Alt Shift”, Baltic, Gateshead/Newcastle. 2008: ‘6 of 1: Performance and Sculpture’, Camden Arts Centre, London, ‘Material Presence’, Zabludowicz Collection, London
The MacGuffin Sculpture
30 September - 10 lNovember 2012
Three years on from his last solo show with us and following his study-residence at Rome’s Macro earlier this year, Graham Hudson returns to Monitor’s white space and to the discipline of the ‘artistic object’. Hudson has always been captivated by the dynamics of the urban space, investigating cities such as London or Rome by penetrating the mesh of their connective tissue through the operative system of his temporary office, from which every change and development of the place in question is dutifully registered and filed.
This English-born artist’s projects – including the recent commission by Film and Video Umbrella in London that culminated in a solo show at the Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth – combine the city’s materials and communication, reinterpreting the urban psychology as it evolves over time.
Hudson turned his attention towards propaganda posters in 2007, during his first trip to Rome. Widely used as a means of communication throughout central and southern Italy, this strongly rooted phenomenon developed with the first elections held in the country after the Second World War. Towards the end of the 1970s, as the number of political parties proliferated and posters continued to be used as adverts for a broad variety of cultural events such as concerts and exhibitions, this vehicle literally ballooned in the 1980s. In the transient work The controlled risk of an undetermined process, one wall of the gallery has been entirely pasted with a myriad of posters ranging from political propaganda to general information on the city. The wall will remain in place from the month of August for the entire duration of the exhibition. The layering of the posters on the wall corresponds also to a linguistic stratification that reveals a system in movement. One whose end result, both in terms of content and physical form, is unknown as the sculpture evolves during the course of the exhibition towards an unclear ending.
In Two diagonal lines bisecting an unknown area a video documents the skyline, a cityscape of metal lattice propping up a crumbling façade with the towering crane of a construction site. The silhouette of a crane thrusts skywards, its two booms converging like the double line of fumes left by a passing aircraft. A quasi-transformation of a vision of the real world into a two-dimensional X drawing rendering in which the unknown variant of potential and infamy is lost in the blue of the sky.
The body of works presented at the gallery prompts the viewer to dwell on how, over time, cities and art are influenced and transformed. The use of industrial materials and equipment such as metal shelving, safety helmets, cement, measuring rods, hammers or sprit levels is intended to convey how techniques and artistic creative processes are applied to the city in response to its inputs, and to reveal how the human and artistic condition is profoundly conditioned by them.
Hudson’s method and modus operandi, as well as his attention to presentation, are constantly evolving. At Monitor the need to investigate the sculptural aspect of his work is expressed through drawings, video and performance. The MacGuffin Sculpture is therefore made up of works that confront the viewer with the state of entropy, impermanence and precariousness of constantly changing political and artistic values.
Graham Hudson (1977, lives and works in London). Selected Solo Show: 2012: ASPEX, Portsmouth, UK, MACRO, Rome, 2011: Arthouse, Austin Texas, 2010: Zingerpresents, Amsterdam, 2009: Monitor, Rome, 2008: Jan Cunen Museum, Oss, Netherlands, Locust Projects, Miami. Selected Group Shows: 2012: ‘Our Mutual Friend’, Film Video Umbrella, London ‘Now I lay my hat down to eat’, Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, Netherlands, ‘Bouvard & Pecuchet’s Compendious Quest for Beauty’, The David Roberts Foundation, London, ‘The Response’, Sunday Painter, London. 2011: ‘Con Amore – Djurhuus Collection’, ARoS, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, ‘An extended exhibition for a transition function’, Hilary Crisp, London, ‘Proxy Or’, Seventeen, London, 2010: ‘Glow’, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, ‘Newspeak’, Saatchi Gallery, London, ‘Languages and Experimentation’, Mart, Rovereto; ‘Mutiny seemed a probability’, Fondazione Giuliani, Rome; 2009: ‘Points and Lines’, LMCC, New York; “Space Rivised#3”, Halle fur Kunst, Leuneburg; “Ctrl Alt Shift”, Baltic, Gateshead/Newcastle. 2008: ‘6 of 1: Performance and Sculpture’, Camden Arts Centre, London, ‘Material Presence’, Zabludowicz Collection, London