Geographies of Contamination

at DRAF, Camden

31 January–29 March 2014
Roberts Institute of Art
  • Olga Balema
  • Neil Beloufa
  • Nicolas Deshayes
  • David Douard
  • Renaud Jerez
  • Sam Lewitt
  • Marlie Mul
  • Magali Reus
  • Rachel Rose
  • Michael E. Smith
Roberts Institute of Art

David Douard, So’ suckle to Mom and So’ suckle to Gro, 2014 at DRAF, 2014.

Courtesy the artist and High Art, Paris. Photo: Matthew Booth
Roberts Institute of Art

Renaud Jerez, PainCorp®, 2014 at DRAF, 2014.

Courtesy the artist. Photo: Matthew Booth

A new exhibition of recent works by ten contemporary artists, tracing a growing interest in the pollution and breakdown of systems and processes. Slippages and spillages, disruption and contamination characterise the sculptural, film and installation works. Many works are newly made or have not previously been shown in the UK.

Installation images

Roberts Institute of Art

Installation view of Geographies of Contamination at DRAF, 2014.

Photo: Matthew Booth

Geographies of Contamination is co-curated by DRAF with Laura McLean-Ferris and Alexander Scrimgeour.

Roberts Institute of Art

Michael E. Smith, Untitled, 2012 at DRAF, 2014.

Courtesy the artist and KOW, Berlin. Photo: Matthew Booth
Roberts Institute of Art

Olga Balema, Subscribing is Better, 2013 at DRAF, 2014.

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam Photo: Matthew Booth

Olga Balema

Olga Balema’s (b. Ukraine, lives in Berlin and Amsterdam) sculptures exist on the border of the alive and the inanimate, using materiality, fragmentation and bodily presences to reduce the distinction between object and subject. Her two works in the show feature an extended latex arm and deconstructed steel fountains, pointing to transformations and mistranslations.

Neil Beloufa

Beloufa’s (b. France, lives in Paris) sculptures, assemblages, videos and installations use displaced, condensed or fictional images. In addition to two works David and Indrė Roberts Collection, Beloufa has exhibited panels of obscured electrical parts that hint at an opaque circuit system, and large freestanding ‘souvenirs’ made from a re-configured fragments of a wall built for a previous show.

Nicolas Deshayes

Nicolas Deshayes (b. France, lives in London) works with glossy, synthetic materials (such as anodised aluminium and vacuum-formed plastic) to create skins, bulges and organic forms with both liquid and solid properties. The contrasting wipe-clean industrial aesthetics and the bodily undertones of his sculptures play on our visceral response to an object. For the exhibition Deshayes is making a new series of vacuum-formed sculptures and an installation of discreet cast aluminum reliefs.

David Douard

David Douard’s (b. France, lives in Paris) works combine films, soundtracks, tweaked and motorised everyday objects to create environments of overlapping digital, virtual, mechanical and material experiences. As part of this first presentation of his work in the UK, Douard exhibits a new commission for the show and group of recent works, including a freestanding fountain system.

Renaud Jerez

Renaud Jerez’s (b. France, lives in Berlin) installations use digital and material presences — mummified plumbing systems, abstracted computer animations, sand, plastic, fragments of decoration — and the vocabulary of the Internet and advertising to evoke an uneasy landscape of contemporary consumerism.

Sam Lewitt

Sam Lewitt’s (b. Los Angeles, lives in New York) works examine communication technologies (both obsolete and cutting edge) that are integral to our contemporary life — systems which are simultaneously familiar and obscure to us. For Fluid Employment, 2012, the artist used ferrofluid, a material used to make hard drives that responds to a magnet yet retains the plasticity of a liquid, straddling both states. Lewitt presents two new and two existing works from his Stored Value Field Separators series, building sculptures from credit and loyalty cards.

Marlie Mul

The work of Marlie Mul (b. the Netherlands, lives in Berlin and London) is often informed by everyday outdoor scenarios, such as air vents that have been appropriated as ashtrays, or gritty rain puddles. Cigarette butts and litter here are traces of human behaviour, suggesting the invisible presence of a virtual population or crowd. Sensitive to the banality of their imagery and narrative, Mul’s sculptures portray these common situations with such artificiality that they are appear as ‘realistic’ rather than ‘real’.

Magali Reus

Magali Reus (b. the Netherlands, lives in London) is interested in the strategic manipulation of everyday things, translating a known object or image into forms that appear to be on the verge of collapsed. In Reus’ works, handmade approximations of these things are shifted away from their expected functions. Making sculpture and video, her work is at once sanitized and hermetic, but contoured by the debris and proximity of human touch. Reus presents three sculptures, each mimicking the form and image of a ubiquitous waiting room chair, but all so graphically rendered that they deny the conventional invitation to sit or linger.

Rachel Rose

The work of Rachel Rose (b. lives in New York) addresses the boundaries between life and death. The work featured here was shot in a cryogenic facility, a robotics perception lab and zoos across America.

Michael E. Smith

The objects, pictures and videos of Michael E. Smith (b. USA, lives in Detroit) appear as physical reconstructions of emotional disfigurement. He counters the ecological and economic disaster of our era by exploring our basic needs.

An Evening of Video Screenings

with Art Night

Roberts Institute of Art

Collection Study
Michael E. Smith, Untitled, 2013

A landscape canvas made from polyester, with a vertical line of Rhododendron leave in the centre

Collection Postcard
Magali Reus, Parking (Legs At Eye Level), 2014

Roberts Institute of Art

A House of Leaves

First Movement at DRAF, Camden

Roberts Institute of Art