Michael Lett is pleased to present Nothing by Itself, an exhibition of new work by Zac Langdon-Pole. In this, his second showing with the gallery, Langdon-Pole has chosen to collaborate on aspects of the exhibition with fellow artists Luke Willis Thompson and Cathy Pole (his mother). Work from The Estate of L. Budd selected and arranged by Langdon-Pole sits alongside the exhibition.
Langdon-Pole’s practice frequently focuses on the incidental. The exhibition will include a number of found paintings purchased from thrift stores, which Langdon-Pole has unpicked, reversed and then re-stretched. The resulting works reveal minimal yet lyrical compositions of vicarious mark making, which having undergone Langdon-Pole’s strict editing process come to reference a range of formal influences.
Langdon-Pole has collaborated with Cathy Pole on a series of works that draw from her extensive and eclectic collection of printed fabrics. These fabrics, accumulated over the course of two decades, comprise a range of off-cuts, misprints and test-prints from textile factories around the world. Langdon-Pole sets to work using these off-cuts, sometimes preserving the negative forms of his mother’s own projects.
The contribution by Luke Willis Thompson will be to select and arrange bunches of flowers for the gallery’s office areas. Their presence might be conspicuous to regular gallery visitors however their peripheral association to the exhibition remains true to Langdon-Pole’s investigations.
Works selected by Langdon-Pole from The Estate of L. Budd include a selection of rarely seen text pieces. These whitewashed pages of Xeroxed text are loosely hinged to the wall with tape. Some bear the artist’s mark with additions and subtractions to the found text. Others are left to stand alone as poetic or philosophical renderings of Budd’s subjective minimalism.
Zac Langdon-Pole (b. 1988) graduated with a BFA (Hons) from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2010. Recent projects include Standing Like Spears at split/fountain, 2011, than at Michael Lett (alongside the launch of Julian Dashper’s collected writings This is not writing.), 2011. Recent Groups shows include In Any Case curated by Window at Ostrale ’011, Dresden Germany, 2011, and Magazine at Gambia Castle, 2009.
Press release courtesy Michael Lett.
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