Ciara Phillips and Jane Topping, “FIELD”, preview 23rd January 2010 6pm – 9pm

Ciara Phillips and Jane Topping

FIELD

Preview: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM, Saturday 23rd January 2010
SATELLITE
61 Thornton Street
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 4AW

United Kingdom

10:30 AM – 6:00 PM, Monday to Saturday

Jane Topping, I Read This Thing..., silkscreen print on paper (2009)

SATELLITE is proud to present

Field

an exhibition of works by Ciara Phillips and Jane Topping

Field marks a new and important development in the dialogue between Glasgow-based artists Ciara Phillips and Jane Topping. Both influenced by language and with a shared interest with the simultaneous promise and frustration of meaning, an abrasive conversation with the viewer.

Toppings work has consistently shown a marked interest in the use and misuse of language. In her recent solo exhibition ‘Persuasion’, Intermedia Gallery, CCA, Glasgow she turned her attention to power plays within working and personal relationships, taking inspiration from gothic literature (Bronte, Sheridan Le Fanu) the films of Dario Argento and Foucault’s ‘The History of Sexuality’.

Deriving points for visual interrogation from a range of appropriated sources Topping bridges a relationship with literary counterparts by sharing a working process which embraces the struggle between labour and the unconscious. Her appropriation of film and literature through an instinctual process of drafting, editing and selection too becomes a characterisation which recognises the subtlety of human behaviour through delineation. Often these characters are transported through this process from their conception to existing as artefact or glyph.

What do I want to say and how do I want to say it? – Phillips peels back those questions to reveal the structures they seek to conceal. As a result, her work assesses the very bones of language itself, from written forms of language and its alphabet, to the language of making, pattern and medium. In this way Phillips exposes structures within structures: the shapes, gestures, forms which, when placed alongside one another, serve to channel the flow of communication.

However, what Phillips’ work also demonstrates is that language as a tool for communication is neither reliable nor objective. By playing with these seemingly ‘fixed’ structures, Philips reveals that letters – once removed from their alphabetical context – are entirely abstract. This, in turn, exposes a tension central to language: that it is simultaneously transparent and opaque. And yet, rather than deliberately seeking to confuse, can it be argued that Phillips – as an artist, a maker, a woman – is trying to reclaim the linguistic tools which convey meaning, and thus power? 
Phillips interest in craft practice lies in the evolution of the ‘language of making’ through the outright dismissal of language, critique and theory in relation to craft.

Field presents the opportunity to explore potential crossovers at an exciting point of development in both Phillips and Topping’s careers.

Born in Glasgow in 1972, Topping graduated with a BA in Painting from Glasgow School of Art in 1999 before serving on Glasgow’s Transmission Gallery committee. Topping has exhibited in group shows internationally and in solo shows at Glasgow School of Art and Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art.
 Topping was the recipient of The Scottish Arts Council Amsterdam Residency 2007/08

Born in Ottawa, Canada, Ciara Phillips studied Fine Art at Queen’s University, Kingston (BFA 2000) and at the Glasgow School of Art (MFA 2004). Recent exhibitions of her work include: Ciara Phillips at Washington Garcia Gallery (2009), Vowelled at the Glasgow Project Room (2007); Scottish Collective, with Market Gallery at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (2006); and The Clamour of Ornament as part of the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art 2006.
During the summer and autumn of 2009 Ciara took part in two residency programmes at Cove Park: the Fairburn Programme for Visual Arts Creative Development.

SATELLITE

is an independent 4 x 3 meter white cube project space for contemporary art situated at Alt Vinyl Record Store in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
www.satellitesatellite.org
To celebrate the opening of Field refreshments will be served on the preview evening.

It will also present a special opportunity to browse the Alt Vinyl record collection out of hours, which specialises in rare, deleted and beautiful records, cds, cassettes and all sonic formats.
http://www.altvinyl.com