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Immortal Nature - Edel Assanti
27 January 2012
Richard Mosse, Flower of the Mountain, 2011 C-print 101 x 127 cm. Edition of 5 + 1 AP
The latest exhibition at Edel Assanti Gallery has been curated by Gordon Cheung, and explores the prophesised end of the world in the year 2012. Showcasing diverse media, the exhibition is split across the gallery’s three floors, reflecting the mythical prism of the underworld, earth and the afterlife. In the ‘underworld’ floor, Kelly Richardson’s video Leviathan perpetuates an atmosphere of timeless limbo. Photographer Robin Friend displays dramatic images of disused mines, capturing today’s underworld, whilst Alex Hoda’s dismembered sculptures of deformed, post-apocalyptic forms evoke a repressed menace. In the ‘Earth’ floor Piers Secunda’s slabs of paint bear witness to the instant in which they were fired at by soldiers of the army of the People’s Republic of China. Richard Mosse’s photographs use an infrared film to transform war torn landscapes into unsettling, surrealist scenes, whilst Howalt’s ambiguous images flip between the metallic crumple of a car crash, and the suggestion of aerial geological strata. In the 'afterlife’ Hew Locke’s installation of gold toys and fake flowers combine into a deity presiding over disposable consumerist values. Set against a backdrop of the Financial Times stock listings, curator Gordon Cheung’s painted landscapes oscillate between utopian and dystopian hallucinations on our reality, whilst Rui Matsunaga’s paintings witness the organic mutations of humanity. Finally, Laurence Edwards’ bronze sculpture is a vision of man’s simultaneous emergence from and absorption into the natural landscape, the final fate of our species.
John Jones are delighted to have framed two C-prints by Richard Mosse for display in this collection. Each print has been dry mounted onto aluminium sheets. This process is popular with photographers for aesthetic reasons, and seals the artwork to the substrate keeping it permanently flat. The wooden frame designs have been soft sanded and sprayed, and the interior of each frame has been lined with a foil cover to protect the artworks.
