Tobias Collier, Flatpack 001, Matt Franks, Brian Griffiths, Clive Lissam, Stephen Sutcliffe, Mark Titchner, Gina Tornatore, Simon Wood

Pallas invited Free Association to curate this second exhibition in Pallas Heights. Free Association is/was a mutable collective of: Jari Lagerman, director and curator of VTO Gallery. Colin Ledwith, curator at the British Council. Mark Titchner is an artist.

“These are the last things, she wrote. One by one they disappear and never come back. I can tell you of the ones I have seen, of the ones that are no more, but I doubt there will be time. It is all happening too fast now, and I cannot keep up.
I don’t expect you to understand. You have seen none of this, and even if you tried, you could not imagine it. These are the last things. A house is there one day, and the next day it is gone”.
Paul Auster, In the country of Last Things.

Biographies:

Tobias Collier’s works in various media: painting, video, drawing. His practice deals in man’s striving towards an understanding of the universe, as in early work ‘Cosmic Cosmology’. His first solo show was at VTO Gallery, since then the artist has exhibited at Stephen Friedman, Lisson and Tommy Lund, Copenhagen.

Flatpack 001 are Mark Beasley, Steve Beasley and Andy Robinson. An artist collective, their interests lie in complicating systems of art reception, often taking on the role of Art Directors or facilitators by proposing contexts in which other artists exhibit their work. Past exhibitions include The Showroom and Cubitt Gallery.

Pillaging the history of sculpture and pop culture at large, Matt Franks conflates elements of modernist sculpture, contempory cartoons and the baroque into playful sculptural forms using everyday industrial materials such as Styrofoam and plastic rubber. Past exhibitions include Anthony Wilkinson, Asprey Jaques and Tate Britain.

Brian Griffiths is known for his lumbering anachronistic junk ‘control panels’, alluding to the early IBM computers that once filled mission controls for countless space missions. Futuristic idealism muted and imbued with melancholy. Shows include Vilma Gold, ICA and Camden Arts Centre.

In twisted echo of the Victorian miniature, Clive Lissaman creates small figurative paintings with standard colours from a hobbyist model makers range. Painted in unsettling naïve clarity, his images of Wrens and Warblers evoke a contemporary bird man of Alcatraz who longs for escape. Past exhibitions include Richard Salmon and City Racing.

Stephen Sutcliffe questions consumer cultures denial of imaginative desire by combining the heritage of British social realist film with the brooding luyrics of Northern pop creating a thoroughly modern ‘Saturday night, Sunday Morning’ for the late shelf stacker. Shows include Anthony Wilkinson, Transmission and Arnolfini.

Mark Titchner conflates seemingly conflicting philosophies through a filter, reconstituting corporate structures, outmoded radical thought and neglected materials to create hybrid sculpture and installation that paraphrase the viral nature of ideology. Shows include Vilma Gold, Richard Salmon, The Approach, ICA and Royal Academy.

Gina Tornatore’s recent film ‘Dead Finks Don’t Talk’ suggest the residue of a volatile event in close-up. The film imitates a suicide, but in fact the setting of a homicide. Her work is highly choreographed: motivated by the language of gesture, it displaces action. Shows include Matteo Boetti’s gallery Autori Cambi, Rome, MC Magma gallery, Milan.

Simon Wood works with found materials acquired from supermarkets and convenience stores. He converts these household consumer items into surprising and astonishing artworks. Wood’s ability relies in distilling an unmistakable message by shifting the everyday in his intuitive works. Simon has shown extensively in the UK and Europe.