bn11 | Sussex Gallery of Modern Art

Stephen Adams : Echolands Installation at bn11 Gallery ::: Show runs Saturday May 16th to Saturday May 30th Private view Saturday 16th May from 7pm – 11pm (Free music/prose readings on the opening night) Echolands www.echolands.co.uk is an exhibition at bn11 gallery running from May 16th at 1pm to Sunday May 30th at 8pm. Curated by artist Iain Macpherson, the exhibition features Stephen Adams with a specially commissioned site-specific work. Stephen Adams writes « My current working practice includes constructions that change over time and where the viewer becomes engaged on both an aesthetic and physical level. My main materials to date are aluminum foil and neon. My work combines two conflicting yet tangible phenomena, colour and light -Neon is vulnerable under certain conditions and begins to flicker, foil has many qualities that fascinate me, It is both seductive and repellent, because of its food packaging associations, It has many metaphoric associations which echo human existence. My hope is that the immediate visual appeal of the work allows further entrance to ideas of mortality. Colour is integral to the work, I often use blue neon because it holds an extreme position in the colour spectrum, referencing infinite space and depth. It also possesses meditative and contemplative qualities. The work holds an ambiguous position between usefulness and uselessness. The construction is correcting yet remote because of the often industrial appearance. They hold a position where the viewer cannot interact with the work because of the potentially dangerous quality of the combined elements. The colours on the minus side are blue, orange-blue and blue-orange. They produce a restless, susceptible, anxious expression. This colour has a peculiar and almost indescribable effect on the eye. As a hue it is powerful as it were, a stimulating negation, Its appearance then, is a kind of contradiction between excitement and repose. « As the upper sky appears to be blue, so a blue surface appears to retire from itself. » Goethe: The Theory of Colours. The piece I will show was actually made as part of my final show during my Fellowship in Groningen. The piece comprises of a single piece of blue neon and I am interested to see how it operates within a dark intimate space. »map Previously at bn11

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