Philip Ewe breaks and builds The Fourth Wall at French Street for Strange Field

Strange Field's first ever major exhibition and events programme continues into autumn at its Dalmarnock French Street venue with Philip Ewe's The Fourth Wall.

Article Source: Strange Field
Last Updated: 19 August 2024 13:06

Taking its title from the performance convention where actors ignore an audience’s presence and direct their performances towards their dramatic world, Ewe’s exhibition is set within the backdrop of Dalmarnock, an area undergoing rapid deconstruction and redevelopment. The exhibition playfully unpicks this context with Ewe relocating the materials and purpose of regeneration, personal branding, and surveillance - as you would bring topics to a therapy session - into the exhibition space, as ‘public objects in private’.

Miniature models, filmed falls, and gesticulated movements communicate a sense of impermanence, of self and place, and situate these within familiar yet often uneasy scenes of urban redevelopment. A text, The Sacred Baby Poo Poo of Art by Freya Field Donovan accompanies the exhibition.

Ewe’s exhibition continues Strange Field’s ethos and methodology of centering the East End communities which the organisation calls home within its events, offering residents the opportunity to experience performance and exhibition art that involves them in a welcoming and inclusive place close to home.

Philip Ewe’s work spans performance, installation, sculpture and film. His work examines the performativity of gestures, of both the individual and the state, and the absurdity that lurks within these interactions. For Strange Field, Ewe considers us as bodies moving through urbanised spaces, drawing on theatrical apparatus and the mediatization of the self to explore personal identity and how the wastelands, decay, and regeneration of these spaces are intrinsically linked to our own psychological and physical transformations within public space.

The exhibition opens on Saturday 14th September, with the premiere of a new performance by Ewe at 7.30pm. On Sunday 6th October, there will be an afternoon closing performance event, co-curated with Ewe and inviting several local artists to engage with the project. More details to follow.

Philip Ewe said: “The Strange Field major programme commission comes at a juncture in my career - where having moved between DIY platforms and institutional frameworks I have been invited into a uniquely hybrid architecture that feels a perfect fit for my practice right now. It's provided the next step and I've developed a show that speaks to autobiography, space and redevelopment in experimental ways and at scale. No exhibition space looks like it, no organisation behaves like it. There is no other environment for support quite like it, it has been thrilling to develop the work and I couldn't be more excited for the show.

It's been amazing to work with Strange Field, a space that feels genuinely embedded in Dalmarnock, directed by unique force of nature Jenny Tipton. They share a passion for the adventurous aspects of making art that has set me free throughout the making of the show. I don't know a situation like it - in its architecture, model of organisation, appetite for experimentation and an ambitious understanding of the support and freedoms artists need to make work as they do.”

Jenny Tipton, Programme Director for Strange Field, said: “We’re so excited to be working with Phil on this exhibition, which will really allow us to push Strange Field's ambitions to experiment with performance in the context of the exhibition at French St, and how this can engage with the wider context of Dalmarnock. The live performance events for the opening and on the 6th October are going to be very exciting opportunities to see Phil and other local artists perform, both inside and outside the gallery! We’re grateful to our support from The National Lottery via Creative Scotland for making this project possible.”

The Fourth Wall is open to the public from Saturday 14 September until Sunday 6 October and is supported by The National Lottery via Creative Scotland.

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