Giles Eldridge
I M A G E S + T E X T
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Installation in StillStand exhibition with Beatrice von Babel Foundation, Craiova Museum of Art, Romania, 2023
Medusa - installation at Suprainfinit gallery, Bucharest, 2021/2022
Oil on canvas, detail from Medusa
Mixed media, detail from Medusa
Gouache on board, detail from Medusa
M e d u s a
Thinking about the arbitrariness of abstraction
the studio is a space of speculation, the exhbition space a place of arrest
in the vitrine is one piece entitled Medusa made of 5 units/shelves comprising 12 works of differing references, materials and physical presence
items are presented and negated
glass shelves delineate the scenario, meaning it is the premise and limit of the space
the selection of works is arbitrary yet structures are formed
there is resonance and dissonance
the installation is specific, temporary and contingent, meaning it will not be shown in this format again.
the studio is one continual body of works
works are not made for an exhibition, they are used for an exhibition
the exhibition utilises items from this body: Medusa represents one such manifestation
but in fact it is a situation of images; more an event than an exhibtion
what is formed is a space that can be read; the viewer has something to read if they choose to do so
there is no metaphor or meaning
there is a situation to be engaged with, including the non-visual differences between images
this is not a series of works nor a themed exhibition, it is the result of a methodology
Medusa is the material presentation of images with no prescribed function other than the production of a space
alongside what they depict, the function of the works also resides in what they are doing
the images maintain agency.
Post Script:
Towards the end of the exhibition the large shelf fell and shattered; apparently caused by traffic vibration. On the same day, due to a cycling accident, I was unable to attend an event at the gallery, where I was to introduce the exhibition. I sent a version of the above text to be installed in the space instead. My assumption is that the shelf fell at the exact moment that my bicycle collided with the car outside my studio.
Thinking about the arbitrariness of abstraction
the studio is a space of speculation, the exhbition space a place of arrest
in the vitrine is one piece entitled Medusa made of 5 units/shelves comprising 12 works of differing references, materials and physical presence
items are presented and negated
glass shelves delineate the scenario, meaning it is the premise and limit of the space
the selection of works is arbitrary yet structures are formed
there is resonance and dissonance
the installation is specific, temporary and contingent, meaning it will not be shown in this format again.
the studio is one continual body of works
works are not made for an exhibition, they are used for an exhibition
the exhibition utilises items from this body: Medusa represents one such manifestation
but in fact it is a situation of images; more an event than an exhibtion
what is formed is a space that can be read; the viewer has something to read if they choose to do so
there is no metaphor or meaning
there is a situation to be engaged with, including the non-visual differences between images
this is not a series of works nor a themed exhibition, it is the result of a methodology
Medusa is the material presentation of images with no prescribed function other than the production of a space
alongside what they depict, the function of the works also resides in what they are doing
the images maintain agency.
Post Script:
Towards the end of the exhibition the large shelf fell and shattered; apparently caused by traffic vibration. On the same day, due to a cycling accident, I was unable to attend an event at the gallery, where I was to introduce the exhibition. I sent a version of the above text to be installed in the space instead. My assumption is that the shelf fell at the exact moment that my bicycle collided with the car outside my studio.
Installation photo (followed by details) of I'm becoming reasonable, shown in the group exhibition Storage Moods at the extraordinary space of the 'saltmine' at Suprainfinit gallery. Bucharest, 2020, photo - Sebastian Apostol / Polysemic Studio
What the Studio is
A continuing body of differing visual elements - drawing, photocollage, paintings, photographs, collected images and hybrids, articulated through varying styles and tropes. These works are then used to make temporary and contingent installations; these manifestations are the work proper. The operation of the work is situated somewhere within the differences between images even though each picture remains discreet and autonomous. Thus, rather than dealing with a substantial body of works the practice handles ideas around inconsistency, variabilty, movement, fluidity and negation. These works form a body of water rather than an archive - nothing is dated or titled, there is no necessarily significant content or meaning within each picture. The location of the work proper could be said to exist outside the pictures, i.e. no individual picture can sum up the Studio practice, the work proper only comes into being when it is shown in the varying contexts of specific installations. The important aspect is the relationship between items, which produces a space for reading, it is a situation.
The images used to make the drawings, paintings etc. all come from existing references such as photographs of paintings, events, objet d'art and so on, articulated in varying styles of execution. Alongside these pictures are works of improvised abstraction derived from a modernist methodology. I think of these as pseudo-abstraction or abstract paintings of the idea of abstract painting.
Terms such as old or new, large or small are redundant.
It is a discourse of fragmentation and an engagement with the arbitrary. It is gendered feminine; it is contrary to singularity. What is between, simultaneously connects and separates; it is a continual circular movement. Content and narrative possibilities are subjugated. Meaning does not even come into it. Irregularities and inconsistency are encouraged. Political potential is implicit. It is a situation of serial negation and the formation of agency.
A continuing body of differing visual elements - drawing, photocollage, paintings, photographs, collected images and hybrids, articulated through varying styles and tropes. These works are then used to make temporary and contingent installations; these manifestations are the work proper. The operation of the work is situated somewhere within the differences between images even though each picture remains discreet and autonomous. Thus, rather than dealing with a substantial body of works the practice handles ideas around inconsistency, variabilty, movement, fluidity and negation. These works form a body of water rather than an archive - nothing is dated or titled, there is no necessarily significant content or meaning within each picture. The location of the work proper could be said to exist outside the pictures, i.e. no individual picture can sum up the Studio practice, the work proper only comes into being when it is shown in the varying contexts of specific installations. The important aspect is the relationship between items, which produces a space for reading, it is a situation.
The images used to make the drawings, paintings etc. all come from existing references such as photographs of paintings, events, objet d'art and so on, articulated in varying styles of execution. Alongside these pictures are works of improvised abstraction derived from a modernist methodology. I think of these as pseudo-abstraction or abstract paintings of the idea of abstract painting.
Terms such as old or new, large or small are redundant.
It is a discourse of fragmentation and an engagement with the arbitrary. It is gendered feminine; it is contrary to singularity. What is between, simultaneously connects and separates; it is a continual circular movement. Content and narrative possibilities are subjugated. Meaning does not even come into it. Irregularities and inconsistency are encouraged. Political potential is implicit. It is a situation of serial negation and the formation of agency.
Détournement and Studio Dérive
Paintings of paintings, drawings of objects, landscapes, portraits, pictures of sculpture, ethnographic references, abstraction, paintings of architecture…spheres and cubes.... photo-collage, photographs, combinations, hybrids and texts. In other words a cacophony of modernist tropes and conventions of painting, quoted ad infinitum using inconsistent and varying modes. The content of each image is not necessarily significant. It is the discrepancy between things that is the concern; the non-visible thing in-between. The individual images are, in a sense, of nothing, whilst of course never entirely losing their original reference. This is movement.
The images also produce a space where they are neither the thing nor the idea but operate upon their own rationale; the materiality of pictures. For this reason they have agency.
Résumé
Giles Eldridge
Born in Sheffield, England, 1965
Lived in London, 1995 - 2014
Now living in București, România
Studio - Atelierele Malmaison
Art Education
Sheffield Hallam University, UK, 1990 – 1993 BA (Hons) Fine Art – Painting
Selected Exhibitions - Solo
... a situation of pictures,Teatre / Theatres, Bucharest, 2024
Medusa, Sequence #7, Suprainfinit gallery, Bucharest, 2021/2022
Fără titul : Salon55, Bucharest, 2017
The Sea (a sea) : A5 Gallery, Bucharest, 2016
What happens if nothing happens : Vlad Basalici's Last Archive project, Gallery Tranzit, Bucharest, 21st Dec. 2015
Gold : Isolation Room / Gallery Kit, St. Louis, USA, 2011
Black : Gimpel Fils and The Agency Gallery, London, 2011
Above the Lunar surface : Nordisk Kunst Plattform, Brusand, Norway, 2010
Scratch against silence slow : Agency Gallery, London, 2010
Including doing nothing : Gimpel Fils Gallery, London, 2008
Non-Isotropic Drawings : Bloc Space, Sheffield, England, 2006
Atelier Gilles : Hat on Wall Gallery, London, 2003
Don't paint that gun at me : Tablet Gallery, London, 2000
Selected Exhibitions – Group
By the Means at Hand, Croatian Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2024
Știlștand / Stillstand, Beatrice von Babel, Craiova Museum of Art, Romania, 2023
Under the House, Beatrice von Babel, Arcub exhibition space, Bucharest, 2023
Storage Moods, Saltmine at Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest, 2020
Tenant #1, On Distance/s, 19 Doors Gallery, Bucharest, 2019
GEST, Dialogical graphics with Sylvia Trăistariu : Piatra Neamț Museum of Art, Romania, 2019
BEING MOUNTAINS, BEING SEAS : Lateral ArtSpace, Cluj, Romania, 2017
Recollection : with Frederick Bell, Dawn Woolley and Steven Scott, Ruimte Morguen Gallery, Antwerp, 2014
Photo and Print : selected by John Stezaker, Charlie Dutton Gallery, London, 2013
Trajector Intermezzo : Art Brussels project, hotel Bloom, Belgium, 2013
Again, a Time Machine, make the dead look living : Book Works' archive touring show : The Showroom, London, Torpedo, Oslo and White Columns, New York, 2012
Ship in the ocean : with Sadie Murdoch, Deptford X, Gallery Plots, London 2010
The Library of Babel : 176 Zabludowicz collection, London, 2010
Downstairs review Part 1 : Gimpel Fils, London, 2010
Faydun Bites : curated by Charlie Danby, Agency Gallery, London, 2009
Art Futures : Bloomberg SPACE, London, 2008
The Golden Record : Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, 2008
Peer Esteem : Five Years Gallery, London, 2007
Ausstellung : with Manfred Michl, Werketage Berlin, 2006
SVO4 : Studio Voltaire, London, 2004
Cast by inertia and the dorsal fin : W139 gallery, Amsterdam, 2000
Selected Projects + collaborations
Beatrice von Babel, live group studio, Romanian Cultural Institute, Venice, 2023
Art Opening, group project at various non-gallery venues, Including Otopeni airport and Izvor Park, Bucharest, 2022
Double Decker, online project with Sandwich Gallery, Bucharest, 2020
Techno Fields, group performative project, Văcărești 'delta', Bucharest, 2020
What happens when something happens, text for Kristin Wenzel's installation The Near and the Elsewhere, Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest, 2020
APOS (so, we're all agreed), text for Kjersti Vetterstad's multidisciplinary project, The Lure Of Gold
Gallery Knipsu, Bergen, Norway, 2019
Techno Transa Body Beats, group dance project, National Dance Centre, Bucharest, 2019
Fete cu idei [Băieți și picturi] - Girls with ideas [Boys and painting]: curatorial project with Delia Popa at Lateral ArtSpace Cluj and ODD, Bucharest, Romania, 2016
Caii Manâncā anason : performative project with Iulia Sima and Georgiana Dobre at Homefest, Bucharest, 2016
Whisky that would benefit from a splash of water : performative dialogue with Ioana Gheorghiu, at Make a Point, Bucharest, 2014
Residency with Bucharest AiR, 2013
Lived in Cluj, Romania, 2010
Residency at Pilotprojekt, Gropiusstadt, Berlin, 2009
Residency on Langeland island, Denmark, 2007
Residency at ECC Ateliers, Berlin, 2006
Selected Publications
The Library of Babel / In and out of place, Ed. Anna-Catharina Gebbers,
Zabludowicz collection, London, 2010
The Happy Hypocrite , Issue 1, Ed. Maria Fusco,
Book Works, London, 2008
Celeste Art Prize exhibition catalogues,
Ed. Sara Pearce, 2006 and 2007
Selected Collections
British Airports Authority, Heathrow, London
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Anita Zabludowicz Collection, London
Trinity Hall College, Cambridge
Book Works, London
Paul Smith Ltd. London
Giles Eldridge
Born in Sheffield, England, 1965
Lived in London, 1995 - 2014
Now living in București, România
Studio - Atelierele Malmaison
Art Education
Sheffield Hallam University, UK, 1990 – 1993 BA (Hons) Fine Art – Painting
Selected Exhibitions - Solo
... a situation of pictures,Teatre / Theatres, Bucharest, 2024
Medusa, Sequence #7, Suprainfinit gallery, Bucharest, 2021/2022
Fără titul : Salon55, Bucharest, 2017
The Sea (a sea) : A5 Gallery, Bucharest, 2016
What happens if nothing happens : Vlad Basalici's Last Archive project, Gallery Tranzit, Bucharest, 21st Dec. 2015
Gold : Isolation Room / Gallery Kit, St. Louis, USA, 2011
Black : Gimpel Fils and The Agency Gallery, London, 2011
Above the Lunar surface : Nordisk Kunst Plattform, Brusand, Norway, 2010
Scratch against silence slow : Agency Gallery, London, 2010
Including doing nothing : Gimpel Fils Gallery, London, 2008
Non-Isotropic Drawings : Bloc Space, Sheffield, England, 2006
Atelier Gilles : Hat on Wall Gallery, London, 2003
Don't paint that gun at me : Tablet Gallery, London, 2000
Selected Exhibitions – Group
By the Means at Hand, Croatian Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2024
Știlștand / Stillstand, Beatrice von Babel, Craiova Museum of Art, Romania, 2023
Under the House, Beatrice von Babel, Arcub exhibition space, Bucharest, 2023
Storage Moods, Saltmine at Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest, 2020
Tenant #1, On Distance/s, 19 Doors Gallery, Bucharest, 2019
GEST, Dialogical graphics with Sylvia Trăistariu : Piatra Neamț Museum of Art, Romania, 2019
BEING MOUNTAINS, BEING SEAS : Lateral ArtSpace, Cluj, Romania, 2017
Recollection : with Frederick Bell, Dawn Woolley and Steven Scott, Ruimte Morguen Gallery, Antwerp, 2014
Photo and Print : selected by John Stezaker, Charlie Dutton Gallery, London, 2013
Trajector Intermezzo : Art Brussels project, hotel Bloom, Belgium, 2013
Again, a Time Machine, make the dead look living : Book Works' archive touring show : The Showroom, London, Torpedo, Oslo and White Columns, New York, 2012
Ship in the ocean : with Sadie Murdoch, Deptford X, Gallery Plots, London 2010
The Library of Babel : 176 Zabludowicz collection, London, 2010
Downstairs review Part 1 : Gimpel Fils, London, 2010
Faydun Bites : curated by Charlie Danby, Agency Gallery, London, 2009
Art Futures : Bloomberg SPACE, London, 2008
The Golden Record : Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, 2008
Peer Esteem : Five Years Gallery, London, 2007
Ausstellung : with Manfred Michl, Werketage Berlin, 2006
SVO4 : Studio Voltaire, London, 2004
Cast by inertia and the dorsal fin : W139 gallery, Amsterdam, 2000
Selected Projects + collaborations
Beatrice von Babel, live group studio, Romanian Cultural Institute, Venice, 2023
Art Opening, group project at various non-gallery venues, Including Otopeni airport and Izvor Park, Bucharest, 2022
Double Decker, online project with Sandwich Gallery, Bucharest, 2020
Techno Fields, group performative project, Văcărești 'delta', Bucharest, 2020
What happens when something happens, text for Kristin Wenzel's installation The Near and the Elsewhere, Suprainfinit Gallery, Bucharest, 2020
APOS (so, we're all agreed), text for Kjersti Vetterstad's multidisciplinary project, The Lure Of Gold
Gallery Knipsu, Bergen, Norway, 2019
Techno Transa Body Beats, group dance project, National Dance Centre, Bucharest, 2019
Fete cu idei [Băieți și picturi] - Girls with ideas [Boys and painting]: curatorial project with Delia Popa at Lateral ArtSpace Cluj and ODD, Bucharest, Romania, 2016
Caii Manâncā anason : performative project with Iulia Sima and Georgiana Dobre at Homefest, Bucharest, 2016
Whisky that would benefit from a splash of water : performative dialogue with Ioana Gheorghiu, at Make a Point, Bucharest, 2014
Residency with Bucharest AiR, 2013
Lived in Cluj, Romania, 2010
Residency at Pilotprojekt, Gropiusstadt, Berlin, 2009
Residency on Langeland island, Denmark, 2007
Residency at ECC Ateliers, Berlin, 2006
Selected Publications
The Library of Babel / In and out of place, Ed. Anna-Catharina Gebbers,
Zabludowicz collection, London, 2010
The Happy Hypocrite , Issue 1, Ed. Maria Fusco,
Book Works, London, 2008
Celeste Art Prize exhibition catalogues,
Ed. Sara Pearce, 2006 and 2007
Selected Collections
British Airports Authority, Heathrow, London
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Anita Zabludowicz Collection, London
Trinity Hall College, Cambridge
Book Works, London
Paul Smith Ltd. London
NB
From here it is not the intention of this website to display documentation of the work. What is shown from now on is an indication of the work and thus an indication of the methodology.
For this reason nothing is titled, labelled or dated etc.
The following pictures are a selection from an ongoing production of small works in the studio : paintings, drawings, collage, digital collage, photographs, hybrids and includes some screenshots/film stills ripped from the Web. All works are small works - around A5 to A3.
For more information, questions or comments email - gileseldridge@phonecoop.coop or Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/pinkasarp/
From here it is not the intention of this website to display documentation of the work. What is shown from now on is an indication of the work and thus an indication of the methodology.
For this reason nothing is titled, labelled or dated etc.
The following pictures are a selection from an ongoing production of small works in the studio : paintings, drawings, collage, digital collage, photographs, hybrids and includes some screenshots/film stills ripped from the Web. All works are small works - around A5 to A3.
For more information, questions or comments email - gileseldridge@phonecoop.coop or Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/pinkasarp/
If a building becomes architecture, then it is art
Wittgenstein : Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. If I am to hide behind a text it could very well be this one.
