Annabel Nicolson, Carlyle Reedy, Marie Yates

Annabel Nicolson, Carlyle Reedy, Marie Yates

Curated by Karen Di Franco and Elisa Kay

CHELSEA space is happy to announce the first exhibition in the programme for 2016. The sun went in, the fire went out: landscapes in film, performance and text, is an exhibition located in the landscapes of practice: the incorporeal zones of activity configured and made real by the artist. Materials are traced across shifting chronologies, where the artists have reconfigured and re-framed past works, dislodging historical interpretation.

Exploring these ideas of land, site, duration and re-presentation, the exhibition comprises works by three artists – Annabel Nicolson, Carlyle Reedy and Marie Yates – who were vital in the development of key movements within the avant-garde in London from the 1960/70s. Through film, performance and text this exhibition privileges ephemeral practices, displaying art works that are iterative, morphic and responsive, re-framing the strategies of documentation and its use within exhibition making.

The exhibition will include a selection from Marie Yates’ series, The Field Working Papers (1971-73), a conceptual gallery project made for The Midland Group Gallery in 1973 that features extensive documentation in image and text of the landscapes of the West Country, as well as environmental sculptural forms and improvisation sound performances; work by Annabel Nicolson including documentation of performances in the landscape and other material from her artist’s book Escaping Notice (1977), and archival material from exhibitions such as Concerning Ourselves (1981) and Of the Cloth (1988). A new performance installation by Carlyle Reedy will integrate and rework material and documentation from earlier performances including Living Human Sculpture in Contemplative Time (performed at the Royal Court, 1972) and A Good Wind (Riverside Studios, 1977).

An accompanying film programme curated by Lucy Reynolds, a publication and an online resource will compliment the gallery display with archive and collection materials as well as interviews with the artists and contributions from other practitioners.