
Kate MacGarry is pleased to announce Peter Liversidge’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition comprises a large-scale new work, a flotilla of boats, unique objects made of found wood collected during walks along the British coastline. Presented as an installation of hundreds, delicate and intricate, they become part of an epic whole.
Nine ‘proposals’ start the exhibition, a method that Liversidge has pursued for 27 years. Each A4 proposal, typed on an Olivetti typewriter, describes an artwork developed during the research phase of a project, irrespective of the outcome.
A neon text work, as a thought, suggests a thought hanging in the air. As an invitation for the viewer to complete, they are a manifested guide to thinking and duality. Installed as a pair they are a repeated, reoccurring thought.
A new series of small sculptures continues the exploration of repetition in Either / Or. An original found fragment is paired with a replica that Liversidge makes using airdrying clay, dust and multiple layers of watercolour to achieve an uncanny likeness to the found object. Similar but not the same, the found fragments are placed alongside their doppelgänger in museum mounts asking to be compared, revealing the similarities and their differences. The series questions identity, perception of likeness and accessibility.
The final work in the exhibition consists of two photographs of the same view. Taken without a tripod or a light meter with a rangefinder camera (the Fuji Fotorama) the second image is taken minutes later than the first. While Liversidge waits, the light shifts, revealing differences as time is bracketed; creating bookends to a short period of time.
Peter Liversidge was born in 1973, in Lincoln, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include: An Echo, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh (2022); Topsy Turvy, Sign Paintings for Belfast, The Mac, Belfast (2020); Sign Paintings for the NHS, Roman Road, E2 (2020); Working title I, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden (2018); Working title II, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden (2019); EDIFICE, COMPLEX, VISIONARY, STRUCTURE, Sean Kelly, New York, USA (2018); Proposals for The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum at The Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, USA (2017); The Bridge (A Choral Piece for Tate Modern), Tate Modern, London (2016); Notes on Protesting, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015). Group exhibitions include: Out of the Margins: Performance in London’s institutions 1990s – 2010s, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022-23); The Double: Identity and Difference in Art since 1900, The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (2022), Notes on Protesting, Kate MacGarry, London (2022); Beano: The Art of Breaking the Rules, Somerset House, London (2021); Inaspettatamente, Cloud Seven, Brussels, Belgium (2021); The World Exists To Be Put On A Postcard, Artists Postcards from 1960 to now, The British Museum, London (2019).
Peter Liversidge was born in the United Kingdom in 1973. For the past decade, all of his work has started with the conceptually-based practice of creating proposals for performances and artworks across a wide expanse of mediums. Liversidge types these proposals on an old manual typewriter. Complete with typographical errors and hand annotations, the proposals describe ideas from the practical to the purely hypothetical, ranging from ‘I propose to paint the wall that the proposals are hung on a dark grey’ to ‘I propose to dam the Thames and flood the City of London.’
The gallery was founded by Kate MacGarry in 2002 on Redchurch Street, London, where some of its represented artists, including Goshka Macuga (Poland), Francis Upritchard (New Zealand), Ben Rivers (UK) and Dr Lakra (Mexico) had their first commercial gallery exhibition. The current gallery space, originally designed by architect Tony Fretton, is on Old Nichol Street where they present six exhibitions a year. The gallery participates in international art fairs including Art Basel and Frieze London where they have presented solo projects since 2010. The gallery represents 25 emerging and established artists; most recently adding Dawn Ng, Rio Kobayashi and Mark Corfield-Moore to the roster.

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