Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art
Exhibition Text
16 April – 25 June 2016
Nick Evans and Lorna Macintyre present a joint exhibition of new photographs and sculptures. The project has been initiated in response to the work of Nicholas Pope whose work can be seen currently in the NGCA’s other gallery and Sunderland Minster. The starting point for the exhibition was Nick Evans’ formative experience of seeing Pope’s sculpture ‘The Apostles Speaking in Tongues Lit by Their Own Lamps’ (1993-96) at Tate gallery in the late Nineties as a student. Recalling the encounter recently, Evans invited Macintyre, in conversation with Pope, to take a series of photographs of the sculptor’s house and studio in Herefordshire.
With Evans’ sculptures and Macintyre’s photographs the artists have created an environment that amplifies certain affinities through the implied, yet absent, work of Pope. By invoking the studio and home, the installation blurs the distinction between the privacy of production and the public nature of display. While Pope’s work inspired a conversation between Macintyre and Evans, her documentation of his working space and home is oblique. She presents a portrait of an artist through an idiosyncratic landscape of objects as much as through their work. The lyrical photographs gesture towards his influence, forming a type of formal and conceptual reverberation across generations.
The exhibition is accompanied by an interview between the artists and the NGCA curator George Vasey expanding on some of the themes. ‘Ur Phenomenon’ is the culmination in a series of exhibition exploring current sculpture with presentations of work by Eric Bainbridge, Maria Zahle, Jonathan Baldock and Pope.