Georgina Hill and James Fuller

slow soft shell

Shared booth at Artissima, Turin

3 - 5 November 2023

South Parade is pleased to present a duo show of new works by London-based artist Georgina Hill and Athens-based artist James Fuller, with an accompanying text by Lucy Rose Cunningham.

James Fuller works predominantly in sculpture, but sculpture that can exist in many forms, thin metal skins, wall reliefs, hollow fragile objects, furniture. Pursuing experimental and unstable processes that operate in the sensitive space between industrial and domestic settings—mass produced hierarchies and craft scales. At Artissima, Fuller presents a series of nickel electro-plated copper wall-based sculptures, where pockets and details penetrate through immaculately reproduced surfaces into multiple depths within the continuous metal facade.

Georgina Hill is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans moving image, text and sculpture - from stained glass figures to motorised domestic objects - challenging mediums’ use and form, mapping social structures through material relations. The constraints of such practices are moved beyond; the power of imagination realised; the potential of a material language opened up.

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James Fuller (b. 1988, UK) lives and works in Athens, Greece. James graduated with an MA in Sculpture from Royal College of Art, UK  in 2018. In the same year he was awarded the following: Kenneth Armitage Sculpture Prize, Tiffany’s x Outset Award, Gilbert Bayes Scholarship, Stapely Trust Educational Grant, and Leathersellers’ Award.

Recent exhibitions include Beyond Fear, Cultural Foundation of Tinos Island (curated by Un Processed Realities) and Portable Elastic Temple, Pet Projects, Athens, Greece, both 2023; Artissima, Italy, 2023 in a duo exhibition with Georgina Hill, and Art-O-Rama, Marseille, 2022. Fuller will be also have an upcoming solo exhibition at South Parade in 2024.

Georgina Hill (b. 1986, Worcester, UK) lives and works in London, graduating with an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2021. Hill previously studied at Universität Der Künste, Berlin (2019), and received a Masters in English Literature from University College London (2009).

Recent solo/two person exhibitions include Mystery Box (with Maximilian Schmoetzer), New Toni, Berlin (Germany, 2022) and In a cowslip’s bell I lie, fluent, Santander (Spain, 2022). Recent group exhibitions include Beware of this and that, Konstärhuset, Stockholm (Sweden, 2023), Doing Time, South Parade, London (UK, 2023), Stilled Images, Tube Gallery, Mallorca (Spain, 2023), esta luz, tóxica (Il movimiento), Belmonte, Madrid (Spain, 2022), Flower in the wind, Belmacz, London (UK, 2023), For the hell of it, Atelier d'artistes de la Ville de Marseille (France, 2023), and Angels of the Wonderful World of Dissocia, Galerie Charraudeau, Paris (France, 2022). Hill will be exhibiting new work in an upcoming solo exhibition at South Parade early 2024.

slow soft shell.

The objects in the space have moved from city to city, restless. Across the isle, across the water. Movement within themselves, particles shifting solid to liquid, to solid and back. Molten pour, molten air. Coolness. Slowing down, sighing, but not quite still. Ink bleeding across silk, absorbing and emanating. Activated electrons bearing witness to change. Archival fragments carrying history, of countries, of villages, of one singular maker. Of many.

The objects in the space have moved from city to city, entering and leaving supply chains, sites for manufacture - of church candlesticks, museum replicas, living room interiors, a mirrored dancehall. Entering and leaving, resisting one singular definition. Interacting with such wider economies beyond the studio, beyond what we think we know. Between technology, craft and collaboration - of modalities, hands, and minds - the three woven together. Moulded, welded, stitched.

The objects in the space are malleable. On first glance they are a tile, a series of seams coming round to meet themselves, cradling something inside. A light to shine out. Silicone poured in. Outside-inside configured. Mechanisms of manipulating, co-authored between maker and material. Choreographed movements coercing silicone beads to panes, silicone skins to acid tanks. Guiding stained glass to frame fractious events; guiding database lettering to nickel-plated copper. Foil wrapped information, outlines for another story. Intimate conversations punctuated by moments of gathering. The poetry of lived experience, constantly undoing itself to build back up or break again. Our successes and failures. Mundane to surreal encounters. Understandings and re-imaginings.

The objects in the space find me as I go through my own shifts; my skin resin-like in the summer heat, a host of glassy parts in November’s grip. A friend tells me they want to change the dynamic, our conversation starting / stopping in the amber light of a pub. Togetherness and uncertainty found in such space, illuminated truly for the first time. A symphony of referral. A hot mess.

Slow peels. They will barely register in your hand. I am barely registering dialogues this month, re-searching ‘electroplate’ and ‘patent,’ seeking solace in the measured squares of Agnes Martin. Jargon comes bittily off tongue and fingertips. Scrolling screens, running back over old exchanges. Becoming our own database, encyclopaedic whirlwinds, shifting calculation grids. What to say next. Language as agitation, of material forming and unforming. Our break a pause, in order to regain connection. Our bodies a kinetic symbol, a palimpsest to redefine each time we query. A deep swirl that circulates, assesses, gleans. Residual findings preserving something of their origin, their first maker, first passion, to now; an extended being / presence / articulation passed between many channels - of heat, signifier, voice, phenomena.

I look at the room’s blinds now, think how they slowly unfurl and wrap again. Peeling back, giving way - giving in - to the next thing.

words by Lucy Rose Cunningham