Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix presents Invisible Narratives2, featuring works by Rebecca Chesney, Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska-Beavan. This exhibition coincides with the launch of an accompanying publication comprising essays by Ella Spencer Mills and Christine Eyene.
Invisible Narratives explores the poetic of place, space and time, through painting, sound installation and site-based research. All three artists use their work to uncover the hidden and understand a place as it is experienced by those who know it well.
Each artist has made new work for the show which gave them an opportunity to develop ideas and relationships forged in the first iteration of Invisible Narratives at Newlyn Art Gallery (Cornwall) in 2019.
About the artists
Rebecca Chesney is concerned with how we conceive land, and how we romanticise, translate and define it. She investigates the impact of human activities on nature and environment and looks at the influence of politics, ownership, management and commercial value on our surroundings. Her installations, habitat creation, drawings, maps and walks are based on research on weather, water quality, air pollution and habitat loss. Her work also reflects on how the concept of nature is informed by a mix of truth and fiction, or science and folklore.
Recent solo shows include Distance, Springhornhof, Neuenkirchen and Alla Breve, Museo Casa Rural di Carcente, San Siro (2018). Group exhibitions include El Balcon, Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, El Paso, Texas and Ruskin: Museum of the Near Future, The Ruskin Library, Museum & Research Centre, Lancaster (2019). Commissions include Forewarning Full of Noises, Barrow, and Soundcamp, London and Cumbria Wildlife Trust (2018); Landed (Cadastral Maps), SG2 research project.
Lubaina Himid CBE, born in Zanzibar in 1954, is a British painter who has dedicated her four-decade-long career to uncovering marginalised and silenced histories, figures, and cultural expressions. Himid currently lives and works in Preston and is a professor at the University of Central Lancashire. She was the winner of the Turner Prize in 2017. In 2021, Himid will present a major monographic exhibition at Tate Modern, London.
Solo exhibitions include Spotlights, Tate Britain, London (2019); The Grab Test, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (2019); Lubaina Himid: Naming the Money, CAPC Bordeaux (2019); Work From Underneath, New Museum, New York (2019); Gifts to Kings, Mrac, Sérignan (2018); Our Kisses are Petals, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2018); The Truth is Never Watertight, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2017); Navigation Charts, Spike Island, Bristol (2017), and Invisible Strategies, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2017).
Magda Stawarska-Beavan, born in Poland, lives and works in Preston and is a joint research lead for ArtLab Contemporary Print Studios at University of Central Lancashire. Her work examines the layering of a city’s unresolved present upon its past and the narratives that unfold within it. Her installations combine moving image, soundscape and traditionally made screenprints and paintings on paper. These projects reveal intimate glimpses of the singular urban soundscapes of places, interrogating their cultural complexities and probing physical and political, public and private borders.
Recent works and exhibitions include: Spaces and Moments, Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London (2020), Risquons Tout, Wiels, Brussels (2020), Reduce the Time Spent Holding – commissioned 8-min sound piece for Lubaina Himid exhibition Work from Underneath, New Museum, New York, (2019); Invisible Narratives, Newlyn Art Gallery (2019); Tales from Water Margins, 4th International Biennial of Casablanca, Morocco (2018), Sounds Like Her, New Art Exchange, Nottingham and UK touring (2017-2020).
Invisible Narratives²
22 May – 19 June 2021
Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix
19 Goulston St
London E1 7TP
www.yamamotokeiko.com
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