Exhibition catalogue text: Phantom Sculpture

I loved writing about ghosts and sculpture for this Mead Gallery exhibition catalogue. Phantom Sculpture (2023 - 24) brought together work by artists of different generations, made over the last sixty years.

Participating artists:

Rebecca Ackroyd, Jonathan Baldock, Phyllida Barlow, Olivia Bax, Joseph Buckley, Anthony Caro, Phoebe Collings-James, Jesse Darling, Richard Deacon, Redd Ekks, Kira Freije, Mona Hatoum, Phillip Lai, Kim Lim, Sarah lucas, Veronia Ryan, William Turnbull, Jala Wahid, Nicole Wermers, Dominique White, Rachel Whiteread.

Excerpt:

It can’t seem too fanciful to propose that there are probably more ghosts coalescing around sculpture than any other artform. This may have something to do with the fact that sculpture dances close to the body (its history, after all, tracks the making of monuments and statues) and that ghosts, however immaterial they might be, take up three-dimensional space in our dreams. Unlike paintings or films which create two-dimensional worlds and hug walls and screens as flatness, sculptures are objects that exist in space - we must walk around them with our bodies in order to grasp their entirety, accreting time and varying viewpoints in our wake. This negotiation lends itself to the idea that sculpture has a ghostly aura, an invisible effect that appeals on a visceral, physico-temporal level. In more ways than one, sculpture casts shadows.

Read full text here.

Helsinki book launch

Helsinki launch of my book ‘Things left undone unsaid uncelebrated unplanned unfinished’ with Publics and Askeaton Contemporary Arts.

4 May 2024
12.00 - 16.00
Publics, Helsinki

Askeaton Contemporary Arts, an artist-led organisation from southwest Ireland, are resident at PUBLICS, bringing a cohort of artists associated with their ongoing programme to audiences and the artistic community in Helsinki. Collectively entitled WITH Askeaton Contemporary Arts, this initiative presents a group of people living together, co-operating and sharing common interests, resources and work in the Irish countryside.

Emphasising oral histories, little known folklore and explorations of urgent ecological research, Seanie Barron’s bespoke walking sticks, Jes Fernie’s explorations of the ups and downs of being an artist working in Ireland, David Beattie’s deep listening of ancient monuments feature. Michael Holly introduces his mapping of contemporary Irish landscapes and ecologies are presented beside Amanda Rice’s spiralling narratives of extraction abroad by the Irish diaspora. More exchanges of artistic experience and social encounter feature in Michele Horrigan and Sean Lynch’s continuing curatorial and publishing activities, researching Askeaton Contemporary Arts’ role and position in contemporary Irish and European society.

Praise the Rain

I was invited to work with developers GPE on a permanent commission for Dean Street, off Oxford Street, London in 2015. Gary Hume’s ‘Praise the Rain’ was installed in 2017 but we had to cover it up, to prevent it from damage while the surrounding public realm and Elizabeth Line station were constructed.

So Gary’s weeds were shrouded in darkness for five years (!) living a secret life, slowly changing in colour and tone, settling in to their blindness, the audience just beyond reach.

The work is a moving reflection on our tenuous relationship to nature and consumption. “Unlike most of what surrounds it, this artwork isn’t for sale. It’s a weed that could be struggling to grow through the surrounding pavement cracks. I tried to make something that is beautiful, and is of nature, as we are”. Gary Hume.

This work is part of a programme of commissions I have curated for GPE around Oxford Street in central London. Other works by Alison Wilding, Rhys Coren, and Robert Orchardson.

Photo: Voytek Ketz, Sprueth Magers Gallery

NYU Abu Dhabi symposium

I’ve been invited to speak at a conference at NYU Abu Dhabi in April 2024. ‘The Generative Archive: Research, Methods and Practices’ has been convened by Salwa Mikdadi, Director, al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, NYUAD along with colleagues at University of North Texas and University of California, Berkeley.

I’ll be using the Archive of Destruction to discuss communal memory, critical fabulation, the role of AI, and alternatives ways of constructing narratives.

Image: conference speakers at NYU Abu Dhabi, 20 April 2024

Book launch

Join us for the London launch of my new publication, ‘Things left undone unsaid uncelebrated unplanned unfinished’

15 Feb 2024
18.30 – 20.30

FormaHQ 

140 Great Dover Street
London SE1 4GW

I’ll be in conversation with artist Sean Lynch, discussing the process of researching material for the book, and doing a reading.

Taking the work of seven artists, film makers and writers who have a connection to Ireland, the book is an attempt to recognise (celebrate even!) the vulnerability, the strangeness, the loneliness, and the arbitrariness of much artistic endeavour and hard graft.

The book is part of the Askeaton Contemporary Arts programme of publications, designed by Daly & Lyon.

Order a copy here

New text for artist Natasha MacVoy

I was invited by artist Natasha MacVoy to write a text for her exhibition ‘U & I’ at Eastside Projects in Birmingham (7 Oct - 16 Dec 2023). We embarked on a rich and rambling five month-long exchange, discussing the various ways that Natasha has rehearsed, adapted and changed the fabric of her world to provide an invisible support structure for her neurodiverse, teenage children.

‘if i walk behind you’ consists of stories about her estranged father, her research into stunt performer Yakima Canutt, the voices inside her head, her work with a wig-maker, and the possibility of imagining life in another body.

Publication design by An Endless Supply.

Lund conference

I’ll be talking at a conference held in Lund in September 2023 about failure, reinscription and the afterlives of public artworks.

Organised by Maddie Leach at Valand Academy, this two day event will discuss issues relating to custodianship and whether ‘failed’ artworks can be revitalised and thought anew; how this raises implications for their authorship and ownership, and what challenges it presents for commissioners, artists, architects, and urban designers. How can producers, owners and custodians of public artworks and the communities and publics living with these works anticipate and accommodate complex afterlives of public art? My contribution will focus on research connecting to my Archive of Destruction project.

Speakers: Patrick Amsellem, Lisa Le Feuvre and Jes Fernie.

Conversation with Rhys Coren

Rhys Coren invited me to have a conversation with him about his current exhibition ‘Ripple’ at Seventeen Gallery. We walked through the four spaces with an audience, a dog, and much good humour.

We talked about feedback loops, MARY HEILMANN, influences and how to recognise them, shiny verses matt objects, sculptures that draw you in and paintings that push you away, RULES PROCESSES CODES PERCENTAGES, fabricators and furniture, no beginnings and no endings.

Listen ‘here.

I got to know Rhys when I worked with him on a major permanent commission in Mayfair, London called ‘Everyone I’ve Ever Known’ (2022)

The Invitation

I was invited by Jönköping municipality in Sweden to write an art strategy for the city, which has just been published. Working with landscape architect Jake Ford, we produced an ambitious, in-depth report called ‘The Invitation’ which draws on the voices of local, national and international artists, curators, architects, planners and museum specialists.

Like many cities across the world, Jönköping is grappling with multiple challenges: urban expansion, a growing population reliant on a crumbling welfare state, the fall-out of neo-liberal policies, the climate crisis, and diminishing cultural funding.

While the book is specific to the city of Jönköping, it is also relevant to a broad range of organisations looking to develop an art commissioning programme that is embedded in the hopeful infrastructure of city life. It takes the temperature of contemporary commissioning practice and proposes ways that things could change.

This project draws on the work I have been doing with Jake Ford over the last seven years in Lund for the award winning Råängen programme of commissions, events, publications and buildings – an urban expansion programme involving artists, thinkers, academics, priests, local people and magic.

Trickster Figures catalogue

Trickster Figures: Sculpture and the Body

Exhibition catalogue published by MK Gallery, May 2023.

Design: Mark El-khatib
Editor: Jes Fernie
Texts: Francis Whorrall-Campbell and Jes Fernie

Big thanks to all those galleries and individuals who funded it / helped made it happen: Maximillian William Gallery, Action Space, Large Glass Gallery, The Approach, Kerlin Gallery, Modern Art, Karen Smith, Bina von Stauffenberg, Frank Krikhaar, Victoria Thomas.

And to the Henry Moore Foundation and the Association for Art History which funded the exhibition and Francis’ text.

Buy here