Hannah Sawtell - Vendor

Hannah Sawtell Vendor

2012
Installation view, Bloomberg SPACE, London

Hannah Sawtell's Vendor, currently on display at Bloomberg SPACE, London, is one half of a 2-part exhibition completed after the artist's residency in the financial forecaster's office spaces. Paired with Osculator at London's ICA, this part of the coupled work consists of an installation of images culled from the internet displayed in purpose-built units which sit in between being sculptures in their own right, or stands for the display of the images they house.

This slick inventory of images, each mounted with a clinical precision in trade-show-display-styled structures on plates of toughened glass reminiscent of screens, relate different digitally rendered 'surfaces' and other found or appropriated 'contemporary material'. Sawtell sets up a slippage between the sensory and the virtual, a conflation of our senses of sight and touch.

Mirroring the experiencing of web-browsing through its dizzying force-feed of seemingly un-related, disparate imagery, Sawtell disrupts the relation of 2- and 3-dimensional disrupting our reading of these flat surfaces by presenting them in space. We have a sense  sense of a fleeting engagement with a mass of information. The work reflects and reflects upon the circulation of data and imagery in the contemporary digital age.

Vendor is on display at Bloomberg SPACE, London, until January 12th 2013.

Seth Price - Business Envelopes, Gifts, Twine

Seth Price - Business Envelopes, Gifts, Twine

2008 - present

Seth Price's work spans text, video, sculpture and sound. He has become internationally known for his conceptual works revolving around ideas of appropriation, and the circulation of materials and information around the world.

'Business Envelopes, Gifts, Twine' are a series of images of envelopes or packages wrapped up with twine printed onto protective 'safety' film mounted on reflective acrylic sheets.  Price's work engages with strategies of recirculation, packaging and dispersion to make us consider issues of material and cultural production. As the 'Business Envelopes, Gifts, Twine'  works are displayed their printed surface slowly peals off. Only 'opening' after the exhibition has hosted its Private View the work begins to corrupt itself presumably hinting at the inevitable detritus of commodity culture.

Alighiero Boetti - Dossier Postale

Alighiero Boetti Dossier Postale (Postal Dossier)

1969–70

Alighiero Boetti began making postal works in 1969, marking a departure from his previous involvement with the Atre Povera movement and showing a new interest in systems and chance operations.

For Viaggi Postali (Postal Voyages) 25 friends, co-workers or family members were selected. The artist sent envelopes addressed to his 'travellers', knowing they would be returned as undeliverable. Boetti photocopied the returned mail, placed it into a new envelope and sent it on its next journey. These photocopies were gathered together and systematically ordered in the Dossier Postale (Postal Dossier). 

Imaginary journeys were drawn up for his addressees; Boetti would send the gallerist Leo Castelli on a tour or Morocco's grandest hotels, his colleague, the artist Giulio Paolini, would be sent to every address Boetti had ever lived in. Other 'recipients' included Marcel Duchamp, Bruce Nauman, Lucy Lippard and Seth Siegelaub.

 Each envelope contains the entire journey, though it is invisible to the viewer. 19 of the original 25 'journeys' were completed, with 6 not returned.