A diverse array of works by Franco-Italian artist Céline Condorelli explores how people – individually, and as part of wider society – live and work together.
The Talbot Rice Gallery show probes the relationships between labour and leisure time, private space and the public realm, and manufactured materials and the natural world.
After Work, which runs until 1 October, features major new works, ambitious installations and the first showing of the hugely versatile artist’s drawings and maquettes.
Gallery transformed
Zanzibar, inspired by Brazilian modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi, creates the feel of a sub-tropical garden, complete with greenery, sunshades and ornamental rocks, which transforms the Gallery’s white cube space.
Cotton/Rubber contrasts with the sunlit space of Zanzibar and evokes the claustrophobic atmosphere of factory production in the textile and rubber industry, while referencing colonial history and international trade.
After Work, made with filmmaker Ben Rivers and poet Jay Bernard, focuses on the building of a children’s playground, which Condorelli was commissioned to create in South London.
Thinking Through Skin, in the Talbot Rice’s Georgian gallery space, contrasts complex industrial processes used to create pigments and dyes with cephalopods’ extraordinary capacity to change colour, seemingly effortlessly.
Cultural fascinations
Condorelli has also curated a series of display cases, which showcase the artist’s research themes, cultural fascinations and experimentations with different materials.
Talbot Rice Gallery Director Tessa Giblin, who curated After Work, says: “For two decades, Céline Condorelli has demonstrated that the reception of works of art is never immune to the conditions of their display.
“After Work presents a number of key works by an extraordinary artist – all of them altered and adapted to the unique, and contrasting, characteristics of the Gallery.”
