Flat Time House
210 Bellenden Road
London SE15 4BW
28/03/2013 – 12/05/2013
Open Thursday-Sunday 12-6pm
A solo show of Melanie Jackson's commission first shown in Transformism at John Hansard Gallery in January 2013.
Melanie Jackson and Esther Leslie, who collaborated on the production of a text that has informed the work and a publication, THE UR-PHENOMENON, were 'in conversation' on Friday 26 April. Their discussion elaborating upon Goethe's concept of the Urpflanze and how as a model for thinking it can transfigure across the social, political and artistic spectrum, acting as a narrative gateway to science fiction and folkloric myths.
An illustrated transcript of their talks can be downloaded here.
In a series of moving image works and ceramic sculptures, Melanie Jackson continues her ongoing investigation into mutability and transformation, which takes its lead from Goethe’s concept of an imaginary primal plant, the Urpflanze, that contained coiled up within it the potential to unfurl all possible future forms. Contemporary science likewise imagines the potential to grow or print any form we can envisage, by recasting physical, chemical and biological function as an engineering substrate that can be programmed into being. These emerging technologies present new possibilities for the instrumentalisation of life on a previously unimagined scale.
Jackson's multifaceted work will be installed throughout the ground floor of Flat Time House, the former home and studio of artist John Latham (1921-2006). Her exploration into the Urpflanze is closely aligned with Latham’s preoccupation with ‘the event’. Within his Flat Time Theory, Latham insisted on ‘the event’ as the smallest unit of existence. Therefore, all phenomena can be considered as 'event-structures' comprised of a continuous compound manifold of unrelenting change. Common to Latham’s works and Jackson’s The Urpflanze (Part 2) there is an opening of the boundaries through and between objects, bodies, non-human and human events, sentient and inert material.
In the eighteenth century, the development of sophisticated techniques of ceramic production signified a victory of chemistry, culture and capital over formlessness. It pushed the capacity of the material to accommodate highly detailed representations, to radiate colour and sheen, to perform. Like clay, liquid crystals also have a visceral biological and mineral morphology that can collapse into formlessness, whilst harbouring the potential to assume (or emit the image of) any form. The mastery of the material is played out in a desire for the real in high definition, and a longing for the appearance of unknown and fantastical forms.
Jackson’s exhibition extends fairytale themes of absurd disruptions in vegetal scale, from Zola's ‘revolutionary’ carrot to the fantasies of remediation that science may have in store for us. The work begins in the botanical garden and leads us to the laboratory, from the clay pits to the factory floor, from its own animated voxels to the interior of the screen, and the forms and processes of its own production.
Melanie Jackson has collaborated with writer Esther Leslie on the production of a text that has informed the work and a publication that will be distributed as part of the exhibition.
In her essay for the exhibition guide, Isobel Harbison describes: “Jackson’s is an expansive, ambitious and intuitive work not easily reducible to cursory description. Her attention to the illusory surface textures of protean forms is not solely attentive to liquid crystals but extends metaphorically to other social and scientific developments (a fictional Jack-and-the-Beanstalk becomes a modern genetic scientist, or crystals self-organise into a palace whose display function changes consumer society forever). Perhaps most interestingly, her work carries within it a reflection on the new nature and task of the contemporary artist.
Jackson’s real enquiry seems to be about the modified face of representative sculpture in the digital age, from Greek mythology’s morphology to natural biology, and from the produce of the clay factory floor to the process of 3d printing.
Significantly, her sculptural inquiry is brought forward in video in conjunction with three-dimensional form embodying both kinds of contemporary physical encounter, now as often on screen as in the flesh.”
Private view Wednesday 27 March, 6-8pm
Last Friday, 26 April until 8pm including kitchen salon with Melanie Jackson and Esther Leslie in conversation
Melanie Jackson inhabits different tropes of art making to interrogate possibilities of representation against the engaged practices of the world. She is interested in ways in which thought and affect is conducted through the material, and much of her work has explored this against the context of work, production and the flow of international capital. She is currently investigating the relationships between nature and technology through a series of experiments with fauna and flora, and the technologies available to her. Melanie is a lecturer at Slade School of Fine Art, her solo exhibitions include The Urpflanze (Part 1), The Drawing Room, London (2010), Road Angel, Arnolfini, Bristol (2007), Made In China, Matt’s Gallery, London (2005). She won the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2007.
Melanie Jackson's commission has been supported by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award and the Slade School of Fine Art. The exhibition is supported by Arts Council England.
Melanie Jackson
Flat Time House
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