ANDREW PIERRE HART

Presented here are a sound composition, a film shot in the streets surrounding Whitechapel Gallery, a series of six new oil paintings, a site-specific mural and a bamboo sculpture. The sound composition, which can be felt physically through a speaker system embedded in a seating structure, forms the soundtrack for the film. This features three dancers who navigate the gallery and surrounding streets, interpreting the area through their movements.

Sound also inflects the abstract and undulating forms that feature in both the large mural and smaller paintings. Hart describes these works as capturing ’the quotidian rhythm of Whitechapel... its vibrant rumble and dissonant past’.

Other paintings portray individuals who live and work locally. Placed in front of the mural is a tower-like sculpture made of black bamboo, a material widely used in Africa for construction projects. The tower’s vertical and diagonal trusses echo the geometric mural design, while its provisional form resonates with the temporary stalls created by Whitechapel’s market traders: gathering places for conversation, friendship and community.

Andrew Hart: Bio-Data Flows and Other Rhythms – A Local Story is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, featuring contributions by Hart, artist Larry Achiampong, writer Allie Biswas, and the exhibition curators, Gilane Tawadros and Cameron Foote.

Andrew Pierre Hart lives and works in London. He describes his work as focussed on ‘the symbiotic relationship between sound and painting’, while also incorporating aspects of sculpture, mural-making, installation, language, performance and film. Hart spent the first part of his career as a DJ and musician running the record label Deepart, which specialised in electronic music and Detroit-style techno. Musical techniques such as improvisation, ‘rhythmic research’ and an interest in the way sound resonates in space now infuse his multidisciplinary art practice. Recent figurative paintings have drawn on Western art historical precedents while also representing real and mythic figures that relate to diasporic experiences in London. His abstract tapestry-like compositions draw on sources as diverse as the hand-painted murals of the Gurunsi people in Burkina Faso, Nigeria; Yoruba divination codes; graphic musical scores; and digital coding.

Hart graduated from an MA at the Royal College of Art in 2019, where he is now Associate Lecturer in painting. Prior to this, he obtained a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts in 2017. His recent solo and duo exhibitions have included The Listening Sweet – 3 – Lagos, Tiwani Contemporary, Lagos, Nigeria (2023);Andrew Pierre Hart & Alexandria Smith: When Cosmologies Meet, Tiwani Contemporary, London UK (2022); The Listening Sweet, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (2021); Charmaine Watkiss & Andrew Pierre Hart: The Abstract Truth of Things, Tiwani Contemporary, London UK (2020). He has featured in group exhibitions including Last of the Stone Age Sessions, Tommy Simoens, Antwerp/Brussels (2023); Corpo e Mente, LVH, Palazzo Barbaro, Venice, Italy (2022_); Secret of Lightness_, Parafin, London (2022), ICF’s Diaspora Pavilion 2: London, Block 336, London (2022), Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Southbank Centre, London (2021); and C_ollective Intimacies at Theaster Gates Black Image Corporation_, 180 The Strand, London (2019). He is the recipient of awards including the ArtAngel ‘Thinking Time’ Award (2020) and the Tiffany & Co. x Outset Studiomakers Prize (2019).