London installation

The team at Matt Roberts Arts spent the first week in January installing the Removed from the Eyes of Strangers exhibition at MRA Project Space on Vyner Street, preparing for the private view last Thursday. Despite the heavy snow, everything went very well and the exhibition looks great!

Below are some images of us preparing the gallery space. We'd like to say a big thank you to all the Arts Trainees, volunteer invigilators and London Met students who helped out over the course of the week.

Jim and Mark, ex-Arts Trainees, contemplating building a wall for Pete Smith's installation.

Pete Smith (artist) with Giulia and Cinthya (Arts Trainees) taking a break.

Matt Roberts.

 

Giulia unwrapping Rachel Goodyear's drawings.

The wall gets underway!

Wendy Mayer arrives with Paper Chain Dolls, a new addition to the exhibition.

Pete Smith building a new installation for the exhibition, using the existing components from the Bedsitter series and found objects.

Removed from the Eyes of Strangers at MRA Project Space, London

7 January – 6 February 2010
Friday to Sunday 12pm – 6pm (plus the first Thursday of each month 6pm – 9pm)
MRA Project Space, Unit 1, 25a Vyner Street, London, E2 9DG

Removed from the Eyes of Strangers brings the work of four emerging British artists -Rachel Goodyear, Matt Lippiatt, Wendy Mayer, Pete Smith- to MRA Project Space. This is the final leg of the international exhibition, following a tour of Galleri Andersson/Sandström in Umeå, northern Sweden, and Co-Lab. in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Removed from the Eyes of Strangers is the culmination of a four-year research project. We asked these artists to develop new work that draws inspiration from the writings of Sigmund Freud, especially in relation to his seminal essay ‘The Uncanny’. Although there have been many exhibitions focusing on this theme, Removed from the Eyes of Strangers is unique in that it has supported new commissions that do more than simply reference Freud’s theory.

The final exhibiting artists attempt to engineer a visceral, physical uncanny occurrence that causes the viewer to momentarily question their preconceptions of the material world. Each artist subtly alters domestic objects, revealing how we can still be terrorised by the slightest shift in our perceptions.

If you would like further information about the exhibition and our programme of events please visit www.mattroberts.org.uk 

Opening night

The exhibition opened last Thursday in Umeå. Gallery Directors Stefan Andersson and Sara Sandström Nilsson introduced the show and Matt Lippiatt and Pete Smith each gave a brief speech about their work.

Stefan and Sara

Pete Smith and Matt Lippiatt

On the left is Lilian, the gallery's administrator. She helped us through the installation, and she has been my main contact for the planning of the exhibition.

Visitors arrive for the event.

'Susan'

Pete Smith came out to Umeå to put together the components of Bedsitter, his pre-exisitng mechanical installations, and to build a new piece for the exhibition at Galleri Andersson/Sandström. The new artwork is called Susan and below is an explanation of the piece by the artist:

"On a visual level, the straight line of the coals is almost like stealing a Richard Long and making it in miniature; the train tracks create a drawn line, as the placement of the track becomes equally as important as any drawn line would be. Landscape and architecture inform my work in many respects. When standing before a piece of Baroque architecture, the really beautiful sculptural elements of the building are hidden from the view at ground level, you see a ledge up high and can only imagine what is beyond. Within the crate portion of Susan there is a sense that the really beautiful aspects are obscured from view, hidden inside the crate.

The train and the crate work in conjunction with each other but also with the surrounding space, and this sense of interaction runs through all my works. The straight line of the railway track and the train attempting to penetrate the crate's exterior, as well as the ambiguous delights that may be hidden inside the opaque crate have led many people directly to a sexual explanation of the piece. However, with all my work, I would reinforce the fact that the artwork is primarily about communication, and sex only becomes a part of this because it is a facet of human interaction. Each of my artworks are about blending the line between the human and the machine - the repetitive and mechanical element involved will always carry sexual undertones, which serves only to add to the human nature of each piece."

--Pete Smith 

Participating Artists - Pete Smith

Bedsitter parts I, 2009, mixed media, various sizes

Pete Smith’s human forms mechanically mimic the shadowy patterns of everyday rituals grown from memories of his childhood and his experience of working in menial roles or on factory floors.