Sheena Wagstaff will curate Studio, a new section that explores the role of workspace in the creative practice, featuring five artists: Arlene Shechet, Maggi Hambling, Mona Hatoum, Lucia Laguna, and Hung-Sook Song.
Wagstaff explains: ‘The focus of Studio is the artist’s place of making, where the spark of invention becomes manifest as an object. Studio starts with the living artist: all five featured artists dig deep into past cultures for historical points of reference to inform and reinvigorate their practice. Each Studio comprises the scope of an artist’s singular oeuvre to evidence its cyclical nature, distinguished by the vigour and creative maturity to embrace risk-taking to reach deeper meaning. Collectively, the projects utilize a broad range of materials including steel, tempera, clay, acrylic, porcelain, paper and hair, often taking them into the realm of the unexpected.
‘For any creative individual, the studio is where time-past flows into time-future. Integral to each Studio booth is a display of archival images and objects, accumulated over decades in an artist’s workroom, imbued with personal narrative and value, invoking their creative lifeline. Often surprising, they offer clues to the artists’ vision, and are witness to the spirit of the studio as an ever-changing, living space. Studio hopes to shift cultural understanding of objects from the past and the importance of thinking historically in the present. To understand that historical art is an active agent in contemporary culture begins with artists themselves.’