Touche, Éclat
Nina Chua
Daniel Davies
Joanne Masding
Yonatan Vinitsky
Touche, Éclat is a group exhibition that brings together 4 artists whose artworks flirt ideas of touch and value across media.
Nina Chua makes drawings that are determined by the capacities and constraints of the materials and tools that she uses. Each series of drawings explores a different nuance in the process, for example the amount of ink in a marker pen, the permeability of cheap A4 or the resilience of paper pulled from a roll. Her drawings are abstract dealing with line, colour and form, made up of straight lines or scribbles drawn repeatedly to cover the surface of the paper. Her deliberate use of Marker pen as an unforgiving medium means marks cannot be erased or reworked. Every slip of the hand and lapse of control is visible and the process of its making is fully revealed in each work. The transparency of the visual information and the accumulative quality of the marks convey a sense of time spent, through the gradual application of line after line.
Daniel Davies’ paintings are centered in a process of translating autobiographical information gathered from domestic 3D objects into digital information and then placing the new information back into real space through the act of painting and printmaking. Taking his source material from the everyday textures and shapes that have surrounded him including patterned clothing, woodchip wallpaper, and children’s building blocks, Davies is interested in how this deliberately flawed process results in undefined, poor quality images that when scaled, repeated, cropped, and overlaid create a more subtle, complex and almost transient image that captures something of our innate desire to constantly rethink and reimagine the space around us.
Joanne Masding’s work asks us to think about our relationship to objects: how worth is attributed, ownership assigned and physical stuff produced, and how these processes translate to a world that is increasingly digital, immaterial and reproducible. She interested in different ways of understanding and knowing objects and attempts to trace where their edges might be. Masding’s text works such as Cast Notes use the authority and materiality of written language to draw out characteristics of works, mechanisms and materials, to playfully suggest and infer rather than offer didactic interpretation.
As one of the last generation of non-digital natives, I’m in a position to consider both the shift towards immateriality that reshapes our experiences of the world, and how the physical vaults of our collective cultures get filled, and that these are urgent and exciting things to invest in. Masding 2017.
Yonatan Vinitsky is a prolific maker, a practitioner grounded in he development of techniques, specificity of materials and finding solutions for display. He is a magpie for obscure sources in art and the world at large, which he translates into his works with uncool, yet convincing sincerity. His technique happily occupies the traditional medias of scultpture, painting, drawing, and photography but he subtly uses and combines materials to pull them into indefinite territories. Is It Better to Say "Two Thousand and Fifteen" or "Twenty Fifteen”? (Part I and Part II) are new works that come from an attempt to show many images at once but to eliminate the familiar grid (as in Google images) as much as possible. Each image has been taken by himself and not from the Internet, deliberately presenting informally using magnets to imply that the composition could always change or mutate, even though it is final.
Artists Biogs:
Nina Chua graduated form am MA in Fine Art from Manchester School of Art in 2011. Recent exhibitions include: And a 123, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, UK, 11:17, CBS Gallery, Liverpool, UK, The Latest, Blip Blip Blip, Leeds, UK, Life and Opinions, Tanya Leighton, Berlin, Germany, From A to C, this being B, Caustic Coastal, Manchester, UK, Green Room, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK. Nina is part of the 2016 Liverpool Biennial Associate Artist Programme and has work in the Whitworth Art Gallery, Collection Manchester, UK. Chua lives and works in Manchester.
Daniel Davies graduated from his BA Fine Art Painting at Northumbria University in 2015. Solo exhibitions include First Kiss, Sunday-s, Copenhagen, DE (forthcoming), Cloud Illusions, Galleria Acappella, Naples, IT , Daniel Davies, Rod Barton, London, UK. Group Exhibitions include We are the ones, Carlsberg Byens Galerie, Copenhagen, DK, You were high when I was doomed, IMT, London, UK, Group Show, Sunday-s, Copenhagen, DK, From The Rocks Above The Pass, Milk Collective, The House Of Blah Blah, Middlesborough, UK, I am a Golden God, Fiebach Minninger, Cologne, (Curated by Henning Strassburger), ‘80 Years’, Limoncello, London, UK, ‘Unpainting / \ Resurfacing’, UH Galleries, Hatfield, UK. Davies lives and works in London.
Joanne Masding graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2007. Solo exhibitors include: Plaster Ghost Finger Cast, The New Art Gallery, Walsall, Lacquer Moving Lightly, Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland, Joanne Masding, 501 Artspace, Chongqing, China. Group exhibitions include In the Peaceful Dome, Bluecoat, Liverpool, Like the green fig tree, Workplace Gateshead (curated by Milk collective), Image Music Text, IMT, London, After, Division of Labour, London, Gone Fishing, Assembly House, SNAKE HORSE GOAT MONKEY, Guest Projects, London, The Place of The Scene, Bloc Projects, Sheffield, Birmingham Show, Eastside Projects, Birmingham. Masding lives and works in Birmingham.
Yonatan Vinitsky studied MA Sculpture, Royal College of Art, London, UK in 2006 and BA Hons Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, London, Solo exhibitions include TBA, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, IL (upcoming) After 12 comes 1, Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv IL, SORTIE DÉFINITIVE, Mon Chéri, Brussels, BE, Loose Ends, Frutta, Rome, IT, Crisscrossing the World, Limoncello, London, UK, Speed Corner Poster 40, Frutta, Rome, IT, Grosso Modo, Galerie De Expeditie, Amsterdam, NL, The Cruel King, curated by Yona Fischer, Ashdod Museum of Art, Ashdod, IL, Wiring up a Disco Unit, Limoncello, London, UK. Group Exhibitions include Walter Benjamin: Exilic Archive, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, IL, I Dropped the Lemon Tart, Lisa Cooley, New York, US, BeatTricks, Milan, IT, The present plates, The DUST, Paris, On a tilted Floor, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR. Vinitsky lives and works between Paris and Canterbury.
Workplace Gateshead is part of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio and is a registered charity 1174379.
