Cathie Pilkington: Night Sea Journey: SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York
Past exhibition
Overview
Karsten Schubert London participates in the 2021 New York edition of SPRING/BREAK Art Show with a solo installation by Cathie Pilkington. Coinciding with Armory Arts Week, the fair is open 8–13 September at 625 Madison Avenue.
Pilkington’s installation, entitled Night Sea Journey, merges canonical sculpture with domestic crafts and folk art bric-a-brac in a jumble of her own dirty-glittery art historical laundry. Against Epic, a sublimely turbulent frieze of clouds and waves, ornament-like sculptures show vignettes of pre-pubescent birthing, inter-species sex and bestial abduction. Night Sea Journey visually floods the space with interconnected motifs, symbols, and stylistic influences in a diverse range of media. Many of these motifs have an art historical point of reference, others are more dispersed, giving the feeling of musty ecclesiastical décor.
Resembling a densely cluttered museum storage cupboard, the booth is a tableau that invites viewing from multiple perspectives. Elaborately painted and decorated objects are visually and thematically entangled with a series of layered canvas screens and draped and folded fabrics that fill and divide the space. The screens depict a variety of scenes: from the Vorticist camouflage of World War I and II destroyers, to references of medieval iconography and heraldry. Painted cloth animal carcasses, some with plaster-filled limbs, lie heaped and scattered across the floor. Sculptural objects both obscure and are absorbed by the landscapes behind them.
Resembling a densely cluttered museum storage cupboard, the booth is a tableau that invites viewing from multiple perspectives. Elaborately painted and decorated objects are visually and thematically entangled with a series of layered canvas screens and draped and folded fabrics that fill and divide the space. The screens depict a variety of scenes: from the Vorticist camouflage of World War I and II destroyers, to references of medieval iconography and heraldry. Painted cloth animal carcasses, some with plaster-filled limbs, lie heaped and scattered across the floor. Sculptural objects both obscure and are absorbed by the landscapes behind them.
SPRING/BREAK Art Show is an internationally recognized exhibition platform using underused, atypical and historic New York City exhibition spaces to activate and challenge the traditional cultural landscape of the art market, typically but during Armory Arts Week.
SPRING/BREAK opening hours
PRESS PREVIEW: Wednesday, September 8 // 11am - 5pm
FIRST LOOK COLLECTORS PREVIEW: Wednesday, September 8 // 11am - 5pm
COLLECTORS PREVIEW DAY (extended): Thursday, September 9 // 11am - 5pm
VIP PREVIEW NIGHTS: Wednesday, September 8 // 5pm - 9pm and Thursday, September 9 // 5pm - 9pm
REGULAR SHOW DAYS: September 10 - 13 // 11am - 8pm
Works
-
Cathie PilkingtonDazzle, 2020Linen, wood, resin, paint238 x 120 x 100 cm | 93 3/4 x 47 1/4 x 39 3/8 in -
Cathie PilkingtonThe Foundling, 2010Jesmonite, paint56 x 30 x 25 cm | 22 1/8 x 11 3/4 x 9 7/8 in
-
Cathie PilkingtonNight Sea Journey, 2021Left to right: The End; The Shallows; The Flood; Climacteric; The Ark; Target
Cotton, linen, wood, steel, paint and felt-tipDimensions variable
