- Venue
- Whitecross Gallery
- Starts
- Friday, June 27, 2008
- Ends
- Saturday, August 2, 2008
- Address
- 122 Whitecross Street, London EC1Y 8PU
- Location
- London
Photographs by Etienne Clément from his Toy Stories series 1, 2 and 3, alongside sculptures by Seamus Staunton from his Constellation series. An unlikely pairing that sets up dichotomies, there are just as many similarities between these works. Staunton’s wall mounted sculptures all have a glossy coloured external shell enclosing a flock-lined interior chamber in contrasting colour. A number of circular apertures punctuate the surface, drawing the viewer’s gaze to an inner space that remains elusive. He has chosen specific contrasting colour combinations as a means of setting up a dialogue between the outer and inner surfaces of his works. Their glossiness is reflected, not only in the Diasec finish of Clément’s photographs, but also in the plastic figurines themselves that are the subject of his pictures. Staged within abandoned, often dilapidated architectural settings, the aging second hand toys appear life size and surprisingly human, inviting the viewer to imagine the, sometimes disturbing, narrative beneath their surface gloss. While Clément’s dramas are staged within an illusory pictorial space within the two-dimensional picture plane, Staunton’s sculptures physically enclose a real space that is only partially visible and must, therefore, be partly imagined. Shown together there is an inference that Staunton’s apertures will lead the eye to further Clément dramas contained within.
