Continuing our series on what Dulwich Picture Gallery attendants get up to when not guarding old masters.
Gareth Cadwallader is an artist. He has curated and is part of a group show taking place in Take Courage Gallery in the Amersham Arms in New Cross. It finishes tomorrow, so hurry there.
Death brings together recent work by 6 London-based artists. The theme of Death is used to thread together a diverse group of works by both established and emerging artists. Death can be seen to embody many paradoxes, and amongst these is the fecundity as artistic subject matter.
Interview with Gareth
Why have you chosen death as the idea behind the show?
Death is one of the big universal artistic themes, along with love/spirituality etc., and as such I think everyone can relate to it on some level. It manages to retain the potential for conceptual weight despite it being totally inclusive in terms of audience, which I find attractive. As a word, ‘death’ seems to be both a very specific and a very vague starting point for a show. It means the end of life, but the range of responses to such a baffling and mysterious subject is infinite.
How would you define the relationship between your own studio practice and your curatorial work?Putting together an exhibition is a creative act in the same way as making a painting, except that the different elements involved are produced externally to the idea of the whole – its something like a collage. Also I’ve chosen artists whose work I admire, and I’ve probably absorbed something of each of them into my own work.
Do you think that there’s any kind of shared mode or style amongst the works you’ve chosen?
The works all share a fairly paired-down and direct feel, both aesthetically and conceptually: they don’t seem intellectually flabby. Perhaps this is a popular contemporary attitude – I really don’t know! Art today contains such a vast array of different ideas and styles that an attempt to reduce it all into categories is probably not helpful – there is no solid line to be drawn or recognised anywhere.
Artists and their works in Death
David Smith was also an attendant at Dulwich Picture Gallery.
Untitled 2008, oil on canvas with cloth tape
Mark Titchner, was shortlisted for the 2006 Turner Prize.
We Are All Immortal 2005, digital print on vinyl
Henry Krokatsis
Untitled (Faun) 2008, pigmented silicone, pigmented wax and wood
Boo Saville. Gareth and Boo were at the Slade together.
God 2008, biro on paper
Gareth Cadwallader, This statue of Reynolds, much dilapidated, is in Leicester Square where he used to have his studio workshop. ‘He is an excellent subject for Death, he looks so defiant’
Reynolds 2007, oil on oak panel
James Balmforth Flowers being killed by light – beautiful and ironic
Consumptive Sublime 2008, single-channel video
