Iniva is delighted to announce its participation in London Art Fair 2016 within the acclaimed Art Projects section – foregrounding new and international galleries showcasing contemporary practice.
Art Projects. Stand P12: Eduardo Padilha
Iniva’s stand at London Art Fair presents a solo show of recent work by London-based, Brazilian artist Eduardo Padilha. A new series of handmade ceramic sculptures of varying sizes are presented here for the first time in public alongside Untitled (Footballers), a wall-mounted installation of found vintage photographs of Brazilian footballers overlaid with brightly coloured acetate sheets. The formal and conceptual interplay between the two works reflects the artist’s interest in the dynamic aspects of curating and assembling which, in this context, contrasts well with the often static nature of traditional art fair displays.
Displayed atop a beech table and plinths designed by the artist, Padilha’s ceramic pieces play with scale as he appropriates the forms of monumental public sculptures. Padilha manipulates the clay intuitively and experiments with glazes to create lustrous surfaces on his ceramics that include masks, small sculptures and larger ‘totem’ sculptures. The latter have been imprinted with re-purposed domestic items and embossed with texture from the surface of found objects. Pieces are created repeatedly so that the gestures and shapes are implied rather than revealing discernible or functional objects: a process which enables different configurations and narratives to emerge within the work. In doing so, Padilha attempts to identify missing links between objects and their environment when they cease to be functional. This new work is an excellent example of Padilha’s ability to investigate the relationship, and disjuncture, between found objects and social environments.
Central to his practice is the process of arrangement/re-arrangement within different physical spaces. This new ceramic series will be further developed in a residency in Brazil, 2016 with Grupo Uirapuru, an orchestral group that use instruments made from clay and who invite musicians and visual artists to collaborate with them.
Iniva has worked closely with Padilha in the past: in 2000 we hosted a residency and subsequent exhibition that interrogated aspects of the artist’s identity defined by growing up on the border of Uruguay and Brazil; the work also explored how icons become invested with cultural, social and political meaning that often belie their origins.
Performance: Harold Offeh, Choreograph Me
Thursday 21 January, 6.30 – 7.30 pm. Talks & Discussion Theatre
Alongside our curated stand, Iniva is also participating in London Art Fair’s performance programme. We have invited London-based Ghanaian artist Harold Offeh to adapt his current project Choreograph Me specifically for the fair.
Choreograph Me, originally commissioned by Mima, Middlesborough, invites audiences to develop a series of instructions for Offeh to perform. Over the period of an hour, Offeh will perform the instructions which form a collectively choreographed piece. By offering his body as a material to be experimented with, Offeh explores the question of how an artist can be used as a sculptural material and his labour made useful to an audience.
Harold Offeh is interested in the space created by the inhabiting or embodying of history. His work encompasses performance, social practice, video and photography, often using humour as a means to confront the viewer with aspects of contemporary culture and history. Recently Offeh has approached the themes of service through collective live engagements with other artists, performers and community participation.
Iniva has worked with Offeh previously on a number of projects including the touring exhibition Veil (2004), The Happiness Lab (2008) and Progress Reports: art in an era of diversity (2010). Offeh has also exhibited widely nationally and internationally including Camden Arts Centre, Gasworks and The Studio Museum, Harlem.
Talk: Performance Art and the Market.
Thursday 21 January, 3.30pm. Talks & Discussion Theatre
A panel discussion which situates the practice of performance artist Harold Offeh within a wider context of an artist’s work being ‘live’ at an art fair, a site that is at once commercially motivated as well as a space for potential experimentation and risk-taking. The talk includes a broader consideration of Iniva’s work with international and hybrid art practices. Joining Offeh on the panel are Melanie Keen, Iniva’s director and curator for the project space and Teresa Calonje, art historian and author of Live Forever: Collecting Live Art.