Camden Arts Centre shows Steven Claydon’s choice of “Objects and Things?

Tuesday, 13 November 2007 02:30

LONDON - Camden Arts Centre presents a new artist-curated exhibition, Steven Claydon has selected works from across the 20th-century examining the relationship between the art object and the institutions which display them. It includes photography, painting, sculpture, installation, film screenings and audio works by Alberto Giacometti, Claude Cahun, Francis Picabia and Elisabeth Frink.

The exhibition follows acclaimed artist-curated shows at Camden Arts Centre such as An Aside by Tacita Dean (2005) and Richard Wentworth’s Thinking Aloud (1998). Claydon’s choice of “objects and things” addresses what he calls “the taxonomies of display”, dependent on modes of display and the fickle nature of market forces.

His own artistic approach is reflected in the thinking process behind the selection and he includes a new installation made in the Clore Ceramics Studio at Camden Arts Centre. The exhibition takes its title from a quote by fictional 1930s detective Charlie Chan and contains a peculiar British Modernism.

“It may be that an acceptance of the manifold nature of histories and cultural contexts could lead us to better understand 'the thinglyness of things’ or it may just be that strange events permit themselves the luxury of occurring.” Steven Claydon

Crossing a number of generations, the exhibition includes sculpture from the start of the 20th-century by Jacob Epstein and Alberto Giacometti to films by contemporary London-based artists Bonnie Camplin, Mark Leckey and Simon Martin. Claude Cahun’s photographs from the 1930s are shown alongside ceramics from the 1970s by Hans Coper. Iconic sculptures by Elisabeth Frink and Lynn Chadwick provide a context for other artists working in the 1970s. A new sculpture by the American artist Charles Simonds has been commissioned by Camden Arts Centre.

Exhibiting artists: Douglas Binder, Anna and Bernhard Blume, Carol Bove, Edward Burra, Claude Cahun, Jeffery Camp, Bonnie Camplin, Lynn Chadwick, Neil Chapman, Steven Claydon, Hans Coper, Keith Coventry, Jane England, Jacob Epstein, Vincent Fecteau, Rachel Fenner, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Elisabeth Frink, Alberto Giacometti, Richard Hawkins, Guy Hetherington, Jenny Holzer, Thomas Houseago, Des Hughes, Peter Lanyon, Mark Leckey, Wyndham Lewis, Simon Martin, Sidney Nolan, Eduardo Paolozzi, Francis Picabia, Elizabeth Price, Margaret Priest, Marcus Selg, Jim Shaw, Charles Simonds, John Stezaker, Graham Sutherland, Edward Underwood, Franz West, J.D.Williams.

Visit Camden Arts Centre at : www.camdenartscentre.org