Conceptual artists group exhibition 'You Get What You're Given' explores human existence

Installation and conceptual artists Lee Baker, Catherine Borowski and Olivia Hegarty present You Get What You’re Given, a group exhibition of new work opening at Hoxton Arches on 17 November 2016 and running for three days.

The show’s title references a Beckettian theme of mortality and the work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human existence. With each artist boldly interpreting the space and bringing intensely personal stories to the viewer, themes of aloneness and the doomed desire to successfully connect with other human beings are expressed.

Catherine Borowski’s work relates to her upbringing in a London council flat and the recent death of her mother, a devout Muslim, on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Borowski describes an empty, liminal place with staircase spindles. Familiar and yet out of context, profoundly strange and new.

Referencing the Japanese concept of mono no aware or ‘pathos of things’, Lee Baker’s paintings are exquisite and delicate. Where the memento mori in Western art reminds us of our mortality, the symbol of a flower in Japanese art specifically highlights the sad beauty of the temporal nature of living things. Baker’s paintings, dislocate the dying flower from context, symbolically locating the moment where deterioration begins.

Olivia Hegarty creates themes around migration and movement. For this show Hegarty installs delicate and fragile porcelainesque forms that speak of human commonalities.

Acclaimed visual artists, each of the three contributors also have hugely successful careers in the worlds of production and design and collaborate in this group show for the first time.

You Get What You’re Given runs from 17 November 2016 to 20 November 2016 at Hoxton Arches.

Lee Baker, Catherine Borowski and Olivia Hegarty You Get What You’re Given