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In Two Minds
Curated by Rowena Chiu
Eleven Spitalfields Gallery, London
13 - 29 November 2009



Kirk Palmer, 
Murmur, 
2006 David Spero, 
Pikisaarentie 10 A (I), Oulu, 2007 David Spero, Lafayette Street (II), New York, 2003 Stewart Cliff, Reverse, 2009 Installation view Yukako Shibata, Beyond, 2009
 (detail) Henry Krokatsis, Untitled, 
2009




‘When someone is seeking, it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal’.

                                                Siddhartha,  Hermann Hesse



This exhibition explores and seeks to affirm the significance of transition; the spaces in-between; the journey rather than the destination. It is interested in the state in which something can be dynamic in its stillness, the idea of motion in non-direction.



Playing with motifs of balance, tipping-points and the liminal, the works in the show offer up moments of becoming. David Spero’s Ball photographs encapsulate elements of stillness and equilibrium, whereby a single gesture transforms an otherwise inanimate landscape into a dynamic one, whilst Stewart Cliff’s unassuming paintings offer a moment between looking and recognition with the artist’s simple rendering of everyday domestic objects into the semi-abstract.



In Kirk Palmer’s video installation Murmur, the forested hills of Kyoto sway with the wind gathering up to a crescendo, whilst Yukako Shibata’s neat sculptures constructed from pared-down materials and a pure form of painting offer a meditative experience.



For this exhibition, Henry Krokatsis has made new work in response to the concept of the show. Each of the works in this exhibition contains within it an element of the monumental in its quietness:



‘There is a size to scale not to do with its actual physical size, its measurement in feet and inches – but connected with vision. A carving might be several times over life-size and yet be petty and small in feeling – and a small carving only a few inches in height can give the feeling of huge size and monumental grandeur, because the vision behind it is big’. 

                                                                                   Henry Moore



This is an exhibition about potentiality, and allowing the space for it.



Stewart Cliff : Bloomberg Contemporaries 2008; winner of the Richard Ford Art Award 2005



Henry Krokatsis : Reconstruction at Sudeley Castle 2008; You’ll never knowat Hayward Gallery 2007; Showcase at South London Gallery 2004



Kirk Palmer : Natural Wonders at Baibakov Art Projects 2009; solo show at Paradise Row 2007; Anticipation at David Roberts Art Foundation 2007



Yukako Shibata : Solo show Luminescence at Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation; winner of the Calyon Investment Bank Art Award and the Davis Langton Award 2005



David Spero : Artists Residency at British School of Rome 2009; Solo show at Photographers Gallery, 2005; The Art of the Garden at Tate Britain 2004