Sean Edwards, Photocopied the artist's pencil, 2008. Courtesy the artist and Limoncello, London
A cumulative lists of all artists and projects involved in Nought to Sixty.
Nought to Sixty presents sixty projects by emerging artists based in Britain and Ireland over six months from 5 May to 2 November 2008.
Most of the artists in Nought to Sixty are under thirty-five, few of them have had significant commercial exposure, and in most cases this is their first opportunity to mount a solo project in a major public space.
The season is not intended to announce any new generation or style, but to build up a multifaceted portrait of the emerging art scene in the two countries, and to provide a space for exchange.
The Nought to Sixty programme consists of:
Events happen at the ICA every Monday night:
Sign up for regular updates about the Nought to Sixty and the rest of the ICA's programme, special events and offers. It's free.
Nought to Sixty is supported by:
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Edwards investigates the sculptural potential of the everyday, often using remnants of previous activities as his starting point - including found or borrowed objects, bits of other works and studio knickknacks.
Sean Edwards's work is in the Upper Gallery from Monday 21 to Monday 28 July.
Often using remnants of previous activities as base material – found or borrowed objects, bits of other works or studio knickknacks – Sean Edwards (born Cardiff, 1980, lives in Abergavenny) investigates the sculptural potential of the everyday. For his recent solo show at Moot, Nottingham, the artist exhibited two recuperated dowels, one of them elongated to match the length of the other, with a layer cake of cork and felt. The patterned regularity of the resulting assemblage displays a distinct graphic sensibility – one that is common to many of Edwards' sculptures.
Since 2006 the artist has been buying a copy of The Sun newspaper every day, and has integrated the publication into a number of artworks. From this starting point Edwards has created works which exploit the tension between two- and three-dimensions. In K_007 (2007) the artist cut a sheet of dolls house paper into the silhouette of a page 3 glamour model, and twisted the paper into a cylinder. Another ongoing work has involved elegantly cutting and compiling the letters 'U' and 'N' from the mastheads of all the issues that Edwards has bought. However, The Sun project is more than just a formal exercise. By incorporating the purchase of the newspaper into his artistic practice, Edwards pointedly brings together the high and low, the quotidian and the 'timeless'.
Edwards also sees this duality in the works of others. During the 2006 World Snooker Championship the artist filmed the crew responsible for assembling the competition tables (Table, 2006). In this video the overwhelming abundance of raw materials – slate tabletops, swathes of green fabric, tacks – highlights the sculptural core of the craftsmen's activity. Similarly, 16mm film Lap Steel (2008) shows a close-up of an anonymous hand playing lap steel guitar. The wooden fingerboard and the metal slide look like the disembodied elements of a moving sculpture, brought together only by the skill and energy of the performing musician.
Edwards' choice of materials is highly self-reflexive. In Untitled (Quilter's tape) (2008) a roll of tape is hung on a big nail hammered high on a wall. If not for its unlikely location it could be a read as a piece of utilitarian equipment, but removed from the studio context the object embodies sheer potentiality, reminiscent of Giovanni Anselmo's twisted cloth piece Torsione (1968). For his Nought to Sixty project, entitled turning it around, slowly, in the light, Edwards presents a sculpture fashioned from off-cuts of wood and cardboard. In this and many of Edwards' previous works there is a sense of objects being in-progress, indeterminate, open to change. His works function like propositions, leaving the conclusion to the viewer. This completion, however, is only ever realised in the exhibition environment, as Edwards believes that works only come into being as a result of their context. Not only does the incompleteness of the work invite the audience to play a part in its creation, it also undermines the perception of the gallery as a space for fully achieved artworks and closed to any further development.
Coline Milliard
Nought to Sixty in pictures: Sean Edwards
Why an institution of contemporary art(s) like this, and not any other?
Artist-led organisations that support networks of emerging art in England outside London.
Photos of the projects, artists and audiences taking part in Nought to Sixty.
Nought to Sixty includes a series of monthly discussions that address the networks that form and contribute to an emerging scene.