UNREST, Intermedia Gallery (CCA)

Works exhibited as part of UNREST, a group show with Ric Warren, Caroline Gallacher & Keith Allan. Intermedia Gallery (CCA), Glasgow:


Ric Warren
Untitled (Protest Posters), 2011
Whose Fucking Park? Our Fucking Park! (Fence: Breached), 2011.
Installation Views (timber, paint, plastic bag, paper)

Whose Fucking Park? Our Fucking Park! (Fence: Breached), 2011. -detail
Whose Fucking Park? Our Fucking Park! (Fence: Breached), 2011. -detail
Untitled (Protest Posters), 2011

Photo Credits: Michael Clarence

New Prints

Mobile Museum

Print produced for Mobile Museum, responding to the theme 'Friday', the print uses a photograph taken on a Friday during riots in Cairo.

Untitled, 2011

characters in search of an exit

'characters in search of an exit' group exhibition with Mircea Cantor, Beatrice Gibson, Mauricio Guillén and Amalia Pica curated by Nicola Celia Wright at MOT International, London.


image credits, MOT International
www.motinternational.org

extract from exhibition text, by Nicola Celia Wright

"characters in search of an exit sees topologies of division articulated through the organising forms and devices of language. Populated by interruptions and iterations, the works are discursive of strategies with which to navigate spaces of separation. Experiencing space as syntax, the artist is frequently apparent as translator or editor. There is a sense of incompleteness given over to the exhibition through its works (a poster for a film not yet made, a scene’s script extracted from a film, a single second of video in unremitting repetition) which are sited at a point of transposition or becoming. characters in search of an exit contends to make visible, through their varied exhibitional forms, the different surfaces of the works’ disruptions, transmissions and interactions within spaces and to bring these into dialogue through shifting sets of associations....
...Ric Warren works to expose political, cultural and physical boundaries within public space. Drawing on the man-made materials which contrive our traversal of the cityscape, Warren’s structures affect to conceal, edit, or corral. Echoing the constant transitions and adjustments of the city, his works distort functionality by exploiting formal traditions of architecture to annex space rather than create it. In City Wall: Constant Shifts (Batons 1-12) (2011), the installation becomes an act of co-option within the exhibition space – a form of architecture that is built to occupy, not to be occupied. The work’s modularity allows it to be expanded or redacted dependent of the given space and permits potential privatization, seizure, and internment, as both reactive installation and autonomous sculpture. The forward slash symbol, carried through in Enclave (2011), further becomes a typographic and grammatical tool with which to reference pacings and divisions in both public space and that of the gallery....
...In a networked, mobile society location has long been liberated from geography as our forms of communication and ways of narrating spaces have similarly quickened in pace, collapsing geographies and distances. Spaces become both accelerated and condensed. Through their various cuts, disruptions, interrupted and uncertain transmissions, conceivably the works in characters in search of an exit examine this acceleration and suggest the need for an interlude, or perhaps, an exit."

Borders, Boundaries & Barricades: Redeveloping Geographies of Division

Enclave, 2011
City Limits: Revanchism and the Redevelopment of Spatial Separation (Shields 1-7), 2011
City Wall: Constant Shifts (Batons 1-12), 2011
Sporting Works 1-3, 2011
City Limits: Revanchism and the Redevelopment of Spatial Separation (Shields 1-7), 2011
City Limits: Revanchism and the Redevelopment of Spatial Separation (Shields 1-7), 2011 - Detail
City Limits: Revanchism and the Redevelopment of Spatial Separation (Shields 1-7), 2011 & Frontier, 2011
Untitled, 2011

Photo Credits: Max Slaven
Ric Warren - Borders, Boundaries & Barricades: Redeveloping Geographies of Division.
David Dale Gallery & Studios, Glasgow. April 2011.

A Discursive Cartography

David Dale Gallery & Studios present A discursive cartography of Borders, Boundaries and Barricades: Redeveloping Geographies of Division. An ongoing investigation of Ric Warren’s work, against the backdrop of Warren’s recent exhibition at David Dale Gallery and his forthcoming one at MOT International. The text will be in collaboration with Nicola Wright, writer and curator of Warren’s MOT International exhibition.

Taking Nicola Wright’s essay in production as the touch paper, the investigation will be an ongoing discourse between interested parties with the deadline for conclusion set to coincide with the opening of Warren’s exhibition in MOT International mid-July. Between now and then the text will be in constant flux: elaborated; redacted; contradicted and addended by the curators at David Dale Gallery, Nicola Wright and, as arbiter, Ric Warren.

The aim is to arrive at a contentious synthesis on a contentious subject, drawing on the breadth of interpretation and intent to bind a text together without author authority or resolution. Mapping arbitrary limits.

Click here to view the essay.

The Pigeon Wing Studio Residency 2010

LUDO, Installation View (Steve Helm, Erik Smith, Amy Joslin & Ric Warren), 2010
Ghetto, 2010
Barricade, 2010
Overlapping Networks (Gold), 2010 / City Wall (Gold), 2010
Jobbies (Gentrified), 2010
Barricade (Collapsed), 2010
Towards a New Theory of Socio-Spatial Apartheid, 2010 / Reinforced Line of Division (Marks on Maps), 2010
Glittering Facade, 2010
Territorial Boundary (Marks on Maps), 2010
Reinforced City Wall (Marks on Maps), 2010
City Limits (Punctuating Separation) , 2010

City Wall (Blue/Grey), 2010

A1 Digital drawing screen print on paper.

LUDO- The Pigeon Wing

Steve Helm, Amy Joslin, Erik Smith and myself have been invited to undertake this years Studio Residency Project at The Pigeon Wing, London. The project is due to take place during August 2010, concluding with an public exhibition.

"While acknowledging various overlaps in conceptual understanding, material usage, stylistic approaches and techniques, we all have very different artistic practices. However, an important commonality is the use of ‘drawing’, in its various forms, as an integral catalyst of our research and creative development. Whether it be sketches in notebooks, photographs, digitally produce images, small models, or video clips; we see them as important and necessary junctures between initial concepts and resolved artworks. With a desire to expose these studio-based aspects of our output, it is our intention to give particular focus to the more immediate and preparatory aspects of our individual practices. Through the bringing together of these autonomous sketches and ideas we hope to rediscover resonance in our interests and form new conceptual relationships between works. We hope to utilise the Pigeon Wing’s project space as a site for experimentation and collaborative development."

www.thepigeonwing.co.uk

Overlapping Networks.

Collage: Ply Wood, Cardboard, Screen Printed Paper.

Marks On Maps (City Wall)

Digital drawing from ongoing series 'Marks on Maps'

City Wall (Punctuating Separation), 2010 - Digital drawing screen-print

With an interest in shifting socio-spatial boundaries within cities, I am currently building upon an investigation of the conceptual understanding, and the physical forms of the ‘temporary’ walls constructed around building sites. Within this process I have become interested in use of forward-slashes within the creation of 2D work. In addition to the aesthetic connection with the batons used in the creation of many construction-site hoardings, I am also interested in their grammatical usage. Similar to physical walls, forward-slashes are used within punctuation to indicate a separation of opposing ideas / alternatives. Taking inspiration from cartography, I am currently experimenting with such typography to create motifs upon grids in an attempt to reference division in physical space.

FUTUREPROOF, Gallacher & Warren

Collective Gallery (Guest Room), Edinburgh, 2009 -in association with PLACE Projects

Brought together by the PLACE Projects, Katherine Gallacher and Ric Warren present FUTUREPROOF: an exhibition featuring selected outcomes of a collaborative research project exploring current trends in the revitalisation of urban landscapes. The installation explores various strategies to re-think Edinburgh's historic urban skyline in order to synchronise the city with the new millennium.Installation View:

Futureproof (Ambition, Modernity & Novelty) / Cycles of Transformation /Modes of Regeneration, 2009

Futureproof (Ambition, Modernity & Novelty), 2009 - Detail

Inspired by homogenous approaches to contemporary town planning that employs a process of building glimmering façades of ‘progress’, we created this tongue-in-cheek proposal for a futuristic cityscape. Concerned with the lack of longevity of such regeneration projects we used aluminium foil to create our crudely produced vision of the future. Aluminum foil has an initial aesthetic deception of a resilient glimmering precious metal contrasted with its actual properties as a cheap, flimsy and ephemeral material. This ‘town planner’s table’ attempts to blur the distinction between sculpture and architectural proposal.

Modes of Regeneration, 2009

These glittering models are loosely based on architectural features of Glasgow’s regenerated river Clyde, but are intentionally not direct copies. Instead, they are intended to cross-reference a fashionable vernacular of architecture that is played out across many post-industrial cities. This work is intended to highlight to the homogeny of contemporary urban planning that tends to use tried and tested formulas of urban reform that involve such conscious in-your-face symbols of futurity that can be considered as glittering façades of ‘progress’.

Strategies of Futurity, 2009

“…the image of the city can arise from changes in perception, as well as from physical alterations. The skyline of a city traces the visual signature of its identity. It offers an immediate reading of its ambition, modernity and novelty through which economic, social and aesthetic meanings are signified. Accordingly, urban imaginaries are constituted by visual narratives – summary readings of history and futurity encoded in the skyline, both as its is and how it might be.”

David Parker & Paul Long : ‘The Mistakes of the Past? Visual Narratives of Urban Decline and Regeneration’

City Limits (Punctuating Divisions) - Towards a Theory of a New Social Apartheid, 2009

City Limits (Punctuating Divisions) - Towards a Theory of a New Social Apartheid, 2009

Installed at White House, Glasgow.

"Lines of division cut through modern cities. These are not simply questions of marks on maps, nor can we think of features such as roads or bridges merely as useful objects. Apparently neutral divisions in space, the mundane geography of walls, edges and outskirts, can have effects beyond their basic function."

Fran Tonkiss (Space, The City & Social Theory)

Cities are constantly in the process of change, reorganizing, demolishing and rebuilding. Recently I have become interested in exploring construction site hoardings- not only do I think they are aesthetically interesting, but I also think conceptually they hold a lot of weight as both a symbolic and literal sign of urban change. The very purpose of a construction site hoarding is to obstruct and to me it represents a sort of apartheid wall, as sites become retransformed and regenerated and the lines of socioeconomic boarders are redrawn. Designed as non-permanent structures within cities, it could be argued that perceptually these walls still remain in existence even after they have been physically removed.

/// CONSTRUCTS 09 ///

City Wall (Punctuating Division), 2009

Marks on Maps 1-4, 2009

Invert (1 of 2), 2009

Preparatory Works 1&2, 2009

Works installed at White House, Glasgow for CONSTRUCTS, a group exhibition curated by Ric Warren. More information, including a profile of each artist involved can be found at www.constructsglasgow.blogspot.com

City Limits, 2009

City Limits (Florence, Edinburgh, Siena, Glasgow), 2009

Ink & Pencil on MDF

City Wall (Digital) 2009