Digital pigment print on Somerset Photo Satin 300gsm paperÂÂ
29.7 x 42 cm, each
Edition of 22 + 4 APs, each edition
Unframed
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This pair of editions dread of the grey arm (orgy) & (beheading), 2020 were produced to accompany the exhibition The Near Room, 2020 by artist Sophie Cundale, starring Penny Goring as the Queen.
Sophie Cundale and Penny Goring exchanged long emails, scanned drawings and texts between March – May 2020, when the artists were physically separated and working in isolation. The resulting drawings feature Amelia (a recurring presence in Penny’s work) with an order of knights drawn by Sophie, together they fantasise in a sterile realm.
Email exchange by Sophie and Penny below, (…) signifies redacted text:
02/05/2020 Penny â€â€> Sophie keep getting confused over what i dreamed last night, what has happened today (nothing lol), and what i’ve read, or watched on tv. its all muddled up. like, was that a tweet i read, or did i dream it, or did it happen?
02/05/2020 Sophie â€â€> Penny Ah honestly, what you have said makes total sense… and wanting to delete it but I’m glad you didn’t. *It being too big for the body to contain* …. it’s the dread of the grey arm – Q.literally a birthing of grief, nothing. The proximity to it (…) is a lucid proximity – not necessarily or immediately emotional (…). Purging some of what the body is trying to contain. Haha, ‘what has happened today’ (nothing lol). There. is. so. much. time. to. think. (That I cant think.)
03/05/2020 Penny â€â€> Sophie wow, the dread of the grey arm, i love that. it could even be our title. the dread of the grey arm (orgy), the dread of the grey arm (beheading). idk (…). hate it when my body reacts to grief more than my thoughts do. this morning i’m thinking 3 flowers only for sure. but only if you totally agree ofc. xx
BIOGRAPHIES
Sophie Cundale (b. 1987) is an artist living and working in London. Previous work has been commissioned by Serpentine Galleries and the South London Gallery; screened at Temporary Gallery, Cologne, Spike Island, Bristol, Govett-Brewster Gallery, New Zealand, Catalyst Arts, AMINI festival, Belfast, VCD festival, Beijing and Innsbruck Biennale, Austria; and hosted on vdrome.org. The Near Room at the South London Gallery is her first major solo exhibition, and travels in October 2020 to Bonington Gallery, Nottingham.ÂÂ
Penny Goring (b. 1962) lives and works in London and graduated in 1994 from Kingston School of Art in London with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art (Painting). Goring makes drawings, paintings, sculptures, videos, and poems that access recurring personal trauma visions, and by layering these with grief, anxiety, imagination and rage, the subsequent invented mythologies become explorations of the contemporary state of emergency – where violence is commonplace, structural, intimate, where loss of freedoms is forgotten or keenly lamented, and there is no rescue or escape. Goring has exhibited at, amongst others, ICA, London; Tate, St. Ives; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; South London Gallery and Arcadia Missa, London.
