My Saved Products
ALVARO BARRINGTON
SPIDER THE PIG, PIG THE SPIDER 2021
INKJET PRINT ON PAPER
80 X 70 CM
Alvaro Barrington’s print edition for SLG130 is divided into two
versions, one of which features the words ‘Spider the Pig’, and the
other ‘Pig the Spider’. Together they reveal the title of the artist’s
2021 exhibition at the SLG Spider the Pig, Pig the Spider. This play on
mutation and inter-changeability is continued through the visual
composition of the prints. Multiple images of the artist’s hand and
forearm are overlaid with digitally rendered line drawings of spiders’
legs and pigs’ trotters in reference to the characters introduced in the
title. These are superimposed onto a backdrop merging elements from the
video game, Grand Theft Auto with Barrington’s photo of a nasturtium
flower and leaf at a community garden near his studio. Two of the five
distinctive arm gestures are based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm: one
is a sign akin to the Hitler salute made by the main character– a pig
called Napoleon, and another mimics the threateningly clench–fisted arms
at the sides of all the pigs at the moment when they start to wear
suits. A contrastingly gentle caress by Grandma Pig in the children’s
cartoon Peppa Pig is the source of the third gesture, alongside another
inspired by the strength and flexibility of the legs in the towering
bronze sculptures of spiders by Louise Bourgeois. The remaining two hand
signs are from Barrington’s own version of the African folktale of
Anansi the Spider, into which he introduces the Black Power fist and the
pointing finger of God from Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam on the
Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Alvaro Barrington (b. 1983 Caracas, Venezuela) is the child of
Grenadian and Haitian migrant workers and was raised between the
Caribbean and New York. Barrington’s practice explores interconnected
histories of cultural production. Considering himself primarily a
painter, his multimedia approach to image–making employs burlap,
textiles, postcards, clothing and cast concrete exploring how such
diverse materials can function as visual tools while referencing
personal, political and commercial histories. Through this confluence of
materials and subject matter Barrington engages histories of music and
painting associated with the Caribbean, the socio–political context of
his childhood in 1980s New York, and London where he is currently based.
Recent exhibitions include MoMA PS1, New York (2017); A Taste of
Chocolate at Thaddaeus Ropac, London (2018); an ongoing Tt×AB
collaboration with the painter Teresa Farrell; co–curation with Julia
Peyton–Jones of the exhibition Artists I Steal From at Thaddaeus Ropac,
London (2019); Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, Paris (2021 and 2018);
Corvi–Mora, London (2020); Sadie Coles HQ, London (2021 and 2019);
Emalin, London (2019 and 2018).
Alvaro Barrington: Spider the Pig, Pig the Spider open until 21 Nov
RASHID JOHNSON
SEASCAPE, 2021
6-CHANNEL SCREEN PRINT ON PAPER
80 X 70 CM
Seascape, 2021 is a variation on a series of ‘boat’ drawings that
Rashid Johnson began to make while isolating with his family in Long
Island during the tense early months of 2020. With limited resources to
hand and finding that the activity of repetitive mark–making was a
therapeutic antidote to the anxiety –inducing circumstances of the
COVID–19 global pandemic, Johnson began a new project, drawing daily in a
series of sketchbooks. Regular sketching had been a foundational
element of Johnson’s early practice, which until then had lain largely
dormant as he concerned himself with other media, especially
installation and painting. In Johnson’s print, the overlapping curved
pencil lines suggest boats or waves. The boat, which may be understood
as a metaphorical vehicle of escape, is a reoccurring theme in Johnson’s
work. These vessels seem to promise access to a future point in time,
beyond the catastrophe of the present moment.
Find out more information about Rashid Johnson’s exhibition at SLG:
Rashid Johnson: Shelter
GABRIEL OROZCO
PLANTING MOTION PLAN, 2021
INKJET PRINT ON COTTON RAG INKJET COATED PAPER
80 X 54 CM
The starting point for Orozco’s print is a photograph shot from a
drone overflying the Orozco Garden at the South London Gallery that
opened to the public in October 2016. The picture was taken in 2021,
five years after the Garden was built and planted. Its flattened
perspective shows the extent to which the Garden has matured over time
with certain areas being overtaken by greenery, as was always the
artist’s intention. To make the print Orozco overlaid a section of the
aerial image with the corresponding blueprint, rendered in green ink and
highlighting the detail of the concentric circle pattern of the York
stone paving. This subtle intervention demonstrates how closely the
Garden matches its technical design plan and could also be read as a
play on the way in which certain plants, such as Mexican fleabane
Erigeron karvinskianus and Mind–your own–business soleirolier
soleirolii, have seeded themselves around the lines and patterns
conceived by the artist.
Find out more about the Orozco Garden at the South London Gallery
CHRISTINA QUARLES
I’S ABOVE ME, AS BELOW, 2021
LITHOGRAPHIC PRINT ON PAPER
80 X 70 CM
This distinctive print is inimitably the work of Christina Quarles.
Developed from an idea taken from an earlier painting, the print focuses
on an androgynous figure in a sky–filled landscape bisected by a folded
plane in a floral pattern suggestive of a domestic floor or tablecloth.
Quarles has said that in her work perspectival planes ‘…situate and
fragment the bodies they bisect. […]. Fixed categories of identity can
be used to marginalise but, paradoxically, can be used by the
marginalised to gain visibility and political power. This paradox is the
central focus of my practice’. Typically for Quarles, the identity of
the figure in this print is deliberately ambiguous, opening up
possibilities for multiple readings, from a winged, haloed angel,
through to a baby, or a corpse buried in a foetal position, seeming to
suggest both an ending and the start of something new, unfixed and
auspicious. Quarles created this print by painting directly onto clear
sheets of mylar in different colours. Each painted layer was then
digitally tweaked, scanned and overlaid to create the final image.
Find out more information about Christina Quarles’s exhibition at SLG:
Christina Quarles: In Likeness
HAEGUE YANG
THE SOURCE OF SPRING IS IN THE TRACE OF A MOVEMENT, 2021
SCREENPRINT ON PAPER WITH DEBOSSING
80 X 70 CM
The Source of Spring is in the Trace of a Movement is an adaptation
of the inscription on the original marquetry floor of the South London
Gallery’s main exhibition space, designed by the 19th–century artist and
socialist activist, Walter Crane. The original inscription, “The source
of Art is in the Life of a People” has been translated into Burmese and
re–worked to relate to recent mass pro–democracy protests in Myanmar.
This movement, known locally as the Spring Revolution, began in
opposition to the military coup of February 2021. Basing the design for
her print on a digital tracing of the original floor pattern, Yang has
reconfigured Crane’s Art Nouveau motifs to allude to the three–finger
salute used by Myanmar’s pro–democracy protesters. The imagery of
Burmese medicinal plants, inserted between the original motifs, appears
significant considering the current unrest and adds contemporary texture
to the notion of “a people” evoked by Crane.
Find out more information about Haegue Yang’s exhibition at SLG:
Haegue Yang: Tracing Movement
