Material Poetics

Zoë Carlon, James Fuller, Tom Hardwick-Allan, Kin-Ting Li, Kenneth Winterschladen & Thea Yabut

25 November - 17 December 22

Location: The Shop at Sadie Coles HQ, 62 Kingly Street, London, W1B 5QN

South Parade is delighted to present Material Poetics at The Shop at Sadie Coles (Kingly Street). The exhibition explores texture, gesture, surface and touch - bringing together work that celebrates materiality and the material experience. The title of the exhibition recognises the first exhibition at South Parade in December 2020 which took Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space as its departure point.

Scroll to the bottom of the page for artist bios and further information.

Zoë Carlon’s paintings explore the conditions for, and experience of, solitude in relation to the rate at which public and private domains are increasingly blurred. Selected subjects are developed from images taken of both her immediate environment and unfamiliar transitory spaces; including unoccupied interiors, views through inner and exterior windows and peripheries of the maintained natural world. Thresholds and structures within the paintings create a relationship between inside and outside, perspective is manipulated and awkward impossibilities are devised, contributing to a sense of ambivalence and lack of resolution.

James Fuller’s practice, possessing a rich material palette, deals in the currency of real world surfaces. Situated between craft objects and digitally manufactured goods, his studio is a place where discarded and wasted energies come to thrive. The work incorporates ideas of ritual and labour, where details dissolve, melt or transform into new surfaces constantly slipping between malleability and fixed states.

Tom Hardwick-Allan treats image making as a digestive process whereby shapes of ideas are broken down to activate the latent chemical potential that they contain. The carved reliefs are metabolised from sheets of birch plywood with chisels, pens, ink, a router and an angle grinder. Continual revision is a means of staying in dialogue with the work; which traces metonymic links between falconry, printmaking, numerology and more. Guided by a principle of negation (or de-composition) in this searching excavation, he attempts to dislodge a framework through which something from another side might arise.

Situated between imagination and reality, Kin-Ting Li creates evolving organic and inorganic structures that suggest both the microscopic and the astronomical. The dry and grainy accumulation of paint with which Li likes to work, creates a viscosity and friction that elicits new and unexpected forms. The protean renderings which shift and flow, make size and location uncertain and destabilise interpretation.

Kenneth Winterschladen’s paintings suggest the mapping of memory and the diagrammatical language of textbooks and instruction. His plans and revisions are forged directly on the surface which contain, among others, varying cosmological or personal motifs, synthesising “detached, out-of-context and dream-like imagery in contrasting positions”. 

Thea Yabut’s hand kneaded sculptures embody the mutability of their construction as are transformed from a wet, malleable pulp into a fossilised record of touch - mixing torn paper and old drawings with water, calcium carbonate, glue and pigment. The inscribed surfaces suggest a meditative and durational activity through repeated patterns and once air-dried contain a skeletal tactility.

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Zoë Carlon (b. 1993, Wakefield, UK) lives and works in Wakefield and studied at the University of Leeds (2013 - 2017) and Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts (Budapest). Recent solo exhibitions include Strange Comfort, South Parade (London, 2021-22). Recent selected group shows include This must be the place, The Art House, Wakefield, UK, CHRONICLES 5, Galerie Droste x KPM Berlin, Berlin, Germany, Wish Lush, Kravitz Contemporary x JM Gallery (curated by Elaine Tam & Arthur Gouillart), London, UK, Collected, 36 Limestreet, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, Studio Showcase, The Tetley, Leeds, UK, Dialogues No1, Centre for Recent Drawing (London 2021) and From Cellar to Garrett, South Parade (London 2021).

James Fuller (b. 1988) lives and works between London and Athens, Greece and graduated from the Royal College of Art (London) in 2018. Recent solo exhibitions/presentations include Sealed from the Inside, Art-O-Rama (Marseille, 2022) and Perfect Living, South Parade (London, 2021). Recent group exhibitions include Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer (Slough, 2022), Under the Volcano, Brooke Benington X m74 (Mexico City, 2020), An Arrangement in Two Halves, a Bench in Two Parts, with Marco Miehling, William Benington (London, 2019) and Further Images, White Crypt (London, 2018). He was the recipient of the Kenneth Armitage Post-graduate Sculpture Prize and the Tiffany's x Outset studiomakers award (both 2018). Upcoming exhibitions include Portable Elastic Temple, Pet Projects, Athens, Greece (December, 2022).

Tom Hardwick-Allan (b. 1996 in Derbyshire, UK) lives and works in London and graduated from The Slade School of Fine Art (2019). Recent solo exhibitions include Scrying the Slice, South Parade (London, 2022) and Going Light, Zarinbal Khoshbakht (Cologne, 2021). Selected group exhibitions include Elif Saydam / Tom Hardwick-Allan, Lady Helen (Berlin, 2022), Pygostyle, The Residence Gallery (London, 2022), Meltdown, Ridley Road Project Space (London, 2022), Pathways on Paper, South Parade (London, 2022), Von der schenkenden Tugend, Zarinbal Khoshbakht (Cologne, 2021), &zines, Weinspach, Zarinbal Khoshbahkt (Cologne, 2021), “Hope” is the thing with feathers, South Parade (London, 2021), Casting the Runes, 108 Fleet Street (London, 2021), Winter Wonderland, Fan Fiction International (Hyde Park, 2021), The Correspondence, Residence Gallery (London, 2020), Flow my Tears, Acud Galerie (Berlin, 2020), In the tame beasts eyes, Zarinbal Khoshbakht (Cologne, 2020) and Breathless: London Art Now, Ca’ Pesaro (Venice, 2019) - curated by Norman Rosenthal & Harry Woodlock.

Kenneth Winterschladen (b. 1993, Washington D.C, USA) lives and works in London and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2020. Recent solo exhibitions include Divinity (sic), South Parade (London, 2022). Recent selected group exhibitions include High Windows, Recent Activity (Birmingham, 2022), Pathways on Paper, South Parade (London, 2022), One Piece (184 Franklin, New York, 2022, curated by Daisy Sanchez), The Gnosis Show (online, 2021, curated by Tosia Leniarska), 50/50, Fold Gallery (London, 2020), Autumn Yield and Bridget Riley Studios, (London, 2019).

Kin-ting Li (b.1991, Hong Kong) lives and works in London and graduated from The Slade School of Fine Art (2019). Recent solo exhibitions include Chimera, South Parade (London, 2021). Recent group shows include Liquid Life, Super Dakota (Brussels, 2022), Inside Out, The Artist Room (London, 2022), Deep Dive, Pradiauto (Madrid, 2022) and Sky-blue and green, VO Curations (London, 2020).

Thea Yabut (b. 1985, Vancouver, Canada) lives and works in Montreal and completed an MFA from Western University and a BFA from Alberta University of the Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include fossa ovalis, Leila Greiche (New York, 2022) and VIBRISSA, L’Inconnue (Montreal, 2018). Recent selected group exhibitions include New Acquisitions, Burnaby Art Gallery (Burnaby, 2021), The Gernsback Continuum, Prometheus Projects (Montreal, 2021), La machine qui enseignait des airs aux oiseaux, MAC Musee d’art contemporain de Montréal (Montreal, 2020), Collagen Shadows, ADA, (Rome, 2020), Morph, Cassandra Cassandra (Toronto, 2019), Object of Desire, Tiger Strikes Asteroid (New York, 2019) and How Deep is Your Love, Cooper Cole (Toronto, 2017). rom 2019-2020 she was Artist-In-Residence in Drawing at Concordia University. Yabut will be included in an upcoming group exhibition at Franz Kaka (Toronto) in January 2023.