Overview

Nuha Saad and Mimi Tong’s painting, sculpture and installation practices take on board shared architectonic concerns. In this exhibition, they aim to create an installation that meets, intersects and opens up their practices’ to interrogation, critique and response. The resulting conceptual and visual dialogue will be founded upon a shared field of practice and methodology, however they also intend to exploit the differences that are present in their work. While Saad integrates Victorian ornament and colour in her constructed wooden sculptures, Tong uses folding and geometric abstraction together with a palette of white and neutral hues in her fluid installations of Tyvek and canvas. It is these two approaches that will be integrated in this work.

For this site-specific collaboration the artists have chosen to focus on one of the existing and most dominant architectural features of Artspace, the timber columns present throughout the gallery space. These timber columns are fundamentally structural, yet they contribute to the identity and mood of the gallery spaces. Taking on board the significant contribution they make to the space, the columns act as a catalyst for this project. Tension between scale, weight, gravity, colour and texture expressed through materiality will be explored forming a dynamic relationship between the installation and site. The artists intend using the columns as pre-existing sculptures that they will then incorporate into their work by surrounding them with clusters of free standing and suspended sculptures. On the one hand emphasising the columns by suggesting and mimicking their form and on the other integrating the columns so that they dissolve into the installation.