Over the course of 2022, KARST’s programme will celebrate a host of local, national and international artists. Exhibitions from Euphrosyne Andrews and Kevin Hunt examine how the architecture and materials of public and private spaces frame social interactions and intimacy. Projects and events by KARST studio artist Katy Richardson, former studio artist Marcy Saude, and studio artist in residence Annie Shrosbree will allow artists to test the limits of their practice. The year concludes with British Art Show 9 where artists will respond to themes – such as healing and migration – that are urgent not only for Plymouth, but also from a global perspective.
MARCY SAUDE: DIRECTIONS: FORWARD
Sonya Dyer/ Eve-Lauryn LaFountain/ Marcy Saude
14 JANUARY – 12 FEBRUARY 2022
Directions: Forward presents moving image work that juxtaposes the mythic and the everyday to develop connections between the past and future. Invoking ritual and resistance, dance and document, historical forces and speculative fiction, the artists map out a terrain that challenges borders – both literal and figurative. Urban indigenous experiences and traces of light captured through photographic process transform the landscape into a celestial realm. Ancestors speak through rhythm across space and time. Histories of settler-colonialism in the built environment intersect with questions of narrative, migration, and community belonging.
This exhibition concludes the Directions project, an artist-led moving image series with a broadly decolonial perspective. Supported by the Mayflower 400 Culture Fund and Arts Council England.
KATY RICHARDSON: A CAKE OF PAINTED TIN
18 & 19 FEBRUARY 2022
Following its exhibition at Studio KIND. in November, A Cake of Painted Tin will be shown at KARST on Friday 18 and Saturday 19 February.
The installation presents a body of new moving image and sound work exploring the experiences of writer Antonia White, with particular reference to her Frost in May quartet of novels. The texts describe White’s early life and young adulthood, including time spent in Bethlem Hospital for a psychosis which was attributed to schizophrenia at the time of her admittance in late 1922, but which might now be understood as a symptom of her probable manic depressive illness (Moran, 2018).
A Cake of Painted Tin is funded by Arts Council England with public funding from the National Lottery.
ANNIE SHROSBREE: BATH SPA RESIDENCY EVENT
25 & 26 FEBRUARY 2022
Multimedia artist, sculptor and Bath Spa graduate Annie Shrosbree will present work she has developed during her 2021 residency with KARST studios in this two-day open event.
Annie’s sculptural practice challenges classically accepted notions of ‘sophisticated art’ in it’s ‘silly’ and ‘child-like’ hand built aesthetic. Her residency at KARST has seen her inspiration become more language based, with a growing focus on memes and other popular forms of online communication as well as word-play and regional dialect. Annie will present a multitude of spatial, size and material juxtapositions at the end of her residency, allowing her collection of ‘jokes’ to hold the physical space in ways that are unavailable to their online equivalents.
EUPHROSYNE ANDREWS: DRAW CLOSE
25 MARCH – 28 MAY 2022
DRAW CLOSE is an exhibition and architectural commission by Euphrosyne Andrews where the artist’s unorthodox approach to printmaking will be translated through a range of materials including prints, paintings, large format textile screens and aluminium sculptures. This new body of work uses the curtain as a central metaphor, exploring the ways materials frame our experience of domestic and public spaces.
A public sculpture on KARST’s facade takes the form of steel screens that cover the gallery’s entrance when closed. This combines with an exhibition drawing parallels between methods of screening in a broader sense, including the curtain’s associations with the intimacy of the domestic environment and theatre’s collective escapism. New works will make reference to the role that cultural, political and technological histories of decorative and applied arts have played in social change.
KEVIN HUNT: (lowkey)
30TH JUNE – 27 AUGUST 2022
(lowkey) is Liverpudlian artist Kevin Hunt’s first solo exhibition and brings together several strands of his practice in a gallery setting for the very first time. Major new bodies of work (including wall-based sculpture, architectural intervention and small functional objects) rooted in his lived-experiences and interactions within municipal post-war architecture are explored from a Queer perspective.
The exhibition is curated by Matt Retallick and is generously supported by the Elephant Trust and MIRROR through their ‘Make Work With Us’ programme.
BRITISH ART SHOW 9
8 OCTOBER – 23 DECEMBER 2022
16 mins 08 secs. Copyright the artist. Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, with Manchester Art Gallery and QUAD. Supported by Arts Council England. Initial research supported by Jerwood Choreographic Research Project.
The British Art Show is a touring exhibition that celebrates the vitality of recent art made in Britain. British Art Show 9 takes a critical look at art produced from 2015 to the present moment, a period that begins with Britain voting to leave the European Union and closes with the still unfolding Covid-19 pandemic. Plymouth first hosted the British Art Show ten years ago. This iteration brings different themes into focus in each city, and in Plymouth it centres on the migration of people, plants, objects, ideas and forms.
The exhibition will be delivered in partnership with Plymouth Culture and shown across four venues: KARST, The Box, The Levinsky Gallery at the University of Plymouth and MIRROR at Plymouth College of Art.