Patrick Goddard , installation view

Patrick Goddard , installation view

Michelle Mckeown , Collider, Installation View, perforated canvas, sand '08

PATRICK GODDARD
A PLAY IN ONE ACT

S.T.O.R.A.G.E: Michelle Mckeown

21 NOV- 10 JAN

09

The Agency is pleased to present the solo exhibition of a series of new sculptural works by Patrick Goddard under the title A Play In One Act .Inspired by literary and theatrical traditions, Goddard's work utilizes concepts of the Absurd to make links between separate sculptural works.

  A gaming table, not quite large enough for pool and too large for card games has a blue line drawn across it, yet no further indication of what game might be played. A man of non-descript middle age is slumped at the table, tired perhaps, decaying in the inertia of pointless activities or the general humdrum of his life. The table is suspended on legs which have beautifully crafted upside down babies holding it up, gothic OTT chic and purposefully designed to highlight the absurdist game of life. A golden empty chair is placed opposite, an absent deity perhaps. The surrounding sculptures are a streetlamp, which "shines" black light, pointless, yet ornately decorated with turned wood. A defunct advertising light-box buzzes bar advertising, giving light where there should be information. The pigeon sculptures brooding on top of it speak of abandonment, whilst the fact that there are three reminds of symbolical judgment. Framing this scenario of unspeakable desolation is a yapping dog trapped on a ladder, a cross between a pitbull and the Hound of Baskerville.   One is not sure to feel sorry for this creature. A large oriental carpet is suspended on the wall, rather than decoratively bourgeois it looks like it's coming to get you.

Patrick Goddard's sculptures stylistically lean towards the Gothic, with a muted colour palette and off-kilter, but discernibly comical juxtaposition of subject matter.   Even though the work focuses on humanity as its subject matter it escapes conservative readings, as it is more about physical suspension. The human figure, the dog and the paraphanelia of suburban certainty are slumped, draped or uncomfortably stuck. Whilst abandonment and loss both seem heavily featured, the figures escape pathos by becoming ciphers dryly reminiscent of Beckett's Molloy or Kafka's Herr K. Like these absurdist characters there is no resolution in sight, which is not bemoaned but just left there for the viewer to feel a bit ill at ease whilst indulging in a level of Schadenfreude.

Goddard is a very young artist at 24 years, and whilst the rite of passage from childhood to adulthood and the fear of becoming a cipher in an ordered world play a role, he neatly freeze-frames the moment of near-failure in a manner that is pertinent to everyone, and more so in the current malaise of global instability. The works hint at symbolism, but maintain their link to Absurdism by refusing to impart hierarchies of significance. Goddard's curious and inventive sculptures manipulate their environment, sometimes threatening to fall into the view's space or reaching out to be saved, thus subverting the traditionally static associations of figurative sculpture.

Patrick Goddard is a recent graduate of Bath University and has since shown in various British venues, including Studio 95, Brick Lane, the Black Swan Gallery, Froome and Section Six gallery, London. He exhibited in S.T.O.R.A.G.E at the Agency in January 2008 and further in SOUL STRIPPER, Projet Midi , Brussels and EVERY BODY, a group show in Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Norway, with a /o Louis Vidal and Jake and Dinos Chapman. He will be part of a group exhibition Borders/ Grenzen , at Upstairs Gallery Berlin, commemorating 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 2009.

MICHELLE MCKEOWN

S.T.O.R.A.G.E is pleased to present Michelle Mckeown with new and recent paintings and an installation. Mckeown's central point of examination are scientific diagrams of movement and particle constellations, which are juxtaposed with the rules of perception in painting.

For Mckeown the examination of historical paintings from different eras is the starting point, yet it leads to the distortion or disruption of said works through her focus on perceptional constellations. From utilising Rohrschach patterns to more complex centrifugal movements commonly found within science, she superimposes the scientific over the painterly. Mckoewn makes no distinction between recognized science and more mystical quasi- scientific patterns, such as those utilised in votive art, Kaballah or other heretic thought.

The artist then proceeds to either regenerate mathematical constellations to geometric effect or scratches, slashes and distorts the surface of imagery. This results in works where means of abstraction are examined in the gradations of paint and the structure of the canvas, or extracted from the work itself and re-presented as an echo of pattern drawn in sand. This creates a kind of vortex, which also re-appears as a motif in other serial works.

Mckeown's work relies on the sensual structure of painting, rather than highlighting the motive itself, her work addresses the sense of touch, order of lines and questions our conventional perception of painting.

Michelle McKeown was born in Northern Ireland in 1979. She studied at the National College of Art and Design Dublin 1998-2001 and the Royal College of Art London 2005-07. Selected group exhibitions include Taster Hockney Gallery Royal College of Art, Matches and Petrol A&D Gallery London in 2006, Ritual Abuse The Boy's Hall Dalston and The Great Exhibition Royal College of Art 2007, as well as L'Apres Moderne, Projet Midi, Brussles.She had a solo show Strange Attractor at Loughborough University Gallery and was included in the John Moores Painting Prize, Liverpool this year.