CGP London are proud to present Making Ships in Bottles at Cafe Gallery, curated by Claire Shallcross.
Making Ships in Bottles explores the process of gathering research and the manipulation of information, the ways artists display their work and the methods they use.
With research obtained from varied sources, libraries, the internet, newspapers or lived experiences, each artist merges obscure or radical ideas and movements from the past within the present. Using a museum-like aesthetic, documentary techniques or design formats they scrutinize different approaches to forms of communication.
Bureaucratic procedures, belief systems or site-specific investigations are researched and revised but the artists rarely conclude any raised issues for the viewer.
Secondary and tertiary sources play with fiction and narratives, often with wry humour or a questioning of the impossible. Making Ships in Bottles highlights alternative political and social perspectives encouraging us to reflect on the present.
The exhibition features selected works from HEXEN 2039 by Suzanne Treister, the 2006 incarnation of the Rosalind Brodsky project described by Art in America as ‘one of the most sustained fantasy trips of contemporary art’, the first London showings of Ken Russell in Conversation with Olivia Plender and Past Imperfect by Bik Van der Pol, alongside new video works from Rebecca Lennon and Gail Pickering.