Amy Stephens
Retain, Reframe

Description

Art Seen was delighted to present Amy Stephens first solo exhibition in Cyprus exhibiting a new series of works specifically made for the show and curated by Maria Stathi. The British High Commissioner Mr Matthew Kidd inaugurate the exhibition on Friday, 17th of November.The show will run until the 31st of January 2018

Stephens works reclaims objects and imagery from the native landscape. Predominantly intuitive, her assemblages range from wood, metal and Perspex, which are suggestive of urban living. Each material is carefully sourced, chosen and collected to create a precise balance and specific narrative.

Downstairs, mini hybrid totems support one another other accompanied by unframed polaroid’s that activate the very essence of the structure’s materiality. These artworks explore reductivist forms with industrial connotations played off against the natural wood and local imagery. A hint of the artist’s signature fluorescent tape is strategically positioned to hold each photograph in place, a comment on the unframed image, supported by materials often associated with framing.

Upstairs, a repeated image of ‘Petra tou Romiou’, also known as ‘Aphrodite’s Rock’, is suspended from the ceiling outside the frame. A different hexagonal coloured form is present in each image making reference to the crystalline structure of the limestone rock. Each hexagon highlights the secret lives of colours in relation to the eight letters that make up the word Aphrodite.

Throughout the exhibition, there is an interesting movement from sculpture to architecture. As you walk around the objects, and neighbouring imagery, Architectural references shift from the classical to the present day. Photography plays a key role in the exhibition offering a window onto the world of exteriors. The boundary between Art and Architecture (Artitecture) is blurred with works sitting somewhere between the real and the imagined. Using both natural and city scape materials, a series of site specific ‘communicative landscapes’ have been created in the main space that retain and later reframe contemporary architecture.

Short Bio

Amy Stephens (b.1981), London, UK lives and works in London

Stephens received an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK (2008). Selected solo exhibitions include rock, paper, mountain, UV Estudios, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2016);fig2 35/50 ICA London (2015); Rocks Remember, William Benington Gallery, London, UK (2015); ‘an oyster can’t read this’, Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2015); Catching the Big Fish, Minibar, Stockholm, Sweden (2013); Collide, Poppy Sebire Gallery, London, UK (2012); This Urban Silence, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland (2011).

Selected awards include fig-futures, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, UK with Art Fund, Arts Council England & Outset Contemporary Art Fund (2018); Villa Lena Artists’ Residency, Tuscany, Italy (2015); Triangle Network Award and International Fellowship to Muscat, Oman with Gasworks Gallery, London, UK (2013); Irish Museum of Modern Art Artists’ Residency, Dublin, Ireland (2011); The Banff Centre, Artists’ Residency, Canada (2010).

In 2016, Stephens was awarded funding from the Arts Council England and the British Council to produce a solo exhibition in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Major public collections include the David Ross Foundation, The Rothschild Collection, The Zabludowicz Collection, UK, The Groucho Club Collection and Soho House Collection. Her work is also in private collections in Brussels, Colorado, Cyprus, Paris, Geneva, Ireland, London and New York.

Amy Stephens is a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors and the Contemporary Art Society in London. The artist is also on the Advisory Board for Block Universe, an annual performance festival in London.

Additional information