un broken

A group exhibition by Kimberley Beach, Helena Collins and Jamie Shaw.

Curated by the artists. Press release by Jamie Shaw.

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.” - Ian McEwan
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"Real dishes break. That's how you know they're real.” - Marty Rubin

A-side B-side Gallery is pleased to present, ‘unbroken’ an exhibition by Kimberley Beach, Helena Collins and Jamie Shaw. The exhibition presents a collection of work from three young artists based in London concerned with the politics of identity, expression and body politic. The exhibition aims to unfold a shared narrative of human experience across three distinct practices, with a focus on the vulnerability of form, body and feeling. Beach, Collins and Shaw work across disciplines to explore the interstices between desire and innocence, pain and pleasure; and to question the cultural totems which traditionally cast strength and fragility as mutually exclusive.

Kimberley Beach works primarily with her autobiographical experiences as subject matter for work across mediums to explore the vulnerability of the female body. Informed equally by life experience and feminist narrative, Beach works to take political ownership of the female form, highlighting the implications and considerations of her body when re-imagined or re-contextualized in the public space. With her practice, Beach aims to contribute to an ever-evolving realm of discourse concerned with female authority and experience.

Helena Collins is interested in the artist’s body as muse. She works primarily with sculpture as a medium for the tentative and material exploration of form and context related to the physical and psychological vulnerabilities of the human body. For Collins breakages, slippages, separations and medicines represent a re-evaluation of traditional notions of the human form as represented in traditional canons of representation. She sees the act of sculpting as a ‘physical working through’ of her emotions.

Jamie Shaw uses painting, collage, installation and text to present personal musings on sentimental themes such as love, desire, longing and failure against the backdrops of consumer and queer culture. His aesthetic and material decisions are inherently bound to a flawed quest for a personal ‘utopia’ – a fairytale, a dream or a hollywood scenario recast from the disparate elements he salvages from consumer culture. Of his practice, Shaw simply says “I’ll paint a picture until you love me…”