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PHOTO: Dan Norton/Ablab
In art, as in architecture and design, the international modernism of the early twentieth century aimed to sweep away traditional habits of thought along with historical styles and materials; from early Cubism’s reduction of form to series of geometric shapes, to Le Corbusier’s unadorned mid-century architecture, a rational geometry equated with purity, of materials as of ideals.
In many senses, Modernism is the idea that will not go away: so much of the world around us now is defined by, or in opposition to it.
The work of the artists grouped together in this exhibition acknowledges this continuing formal and ideological legacy. Their approach is often critical of, and in some instances possibly nostalgic for the idealism of that age; it admits of Modernisms failures but sets them alongside the failings of our own age. Rather than a cynical appropriation of one among a plethora of aesthetic styles available, in reconsidering the power of modernist formalism, there is an attempt to give it new relevance in a contemporary context.
Included are works of the following British artists:
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