Amie Siegel: Strata, new exhibition at South London Gallery
13/01/2017.
[LON] UK 20.01–26.03.2017
metalocus, INÉS LALUETA
metalocus, INÉS LALUETA
For New York-based artist Amie Siegel’s first solo show in London, the South London Gallery presents recent works which explore the mechanisms through which objects become imbued with meaning. Amie Siegel uses film and photography to explore architecture and fetishization.
Amie Siegel, Quarry, 2015. HD video, 34 minutes (still). Courtesy Simon Preston Gallery, New York.
Amie Siegel, Quarry, 2015, exhibition view. HD video, 34 minutes (still). Courtesy Simon Preston Gallery, New York.
Amie Siegel, Quarry, 2015, exhibition view, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Courtesy Simon Preston Gallery, New York.
Amie Siegel, Quarry, 2015, exhibition view, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Courtesy Simon Preston Gallery, New York.
Amie Siegel, Quarry, 2015, exhibition view. HD video, 34 minutes (still). Courtesy Simon Preston Gallery, New York.
Amie Siegel, Quarry, 2015. HD video (still). Image courtesy the artist and Simon Preston Gallery, New York.
Amie Siegel, The Architects (still), 2014, HD video, color/sound. Courtesy the artist, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and Simon Preston Gallery, New York
Amie Siegel, The Spear in the Stone, 2016, exhibition view, Simon Preston Gallery, New York. Courtesy Simon Preston Gallery, New York.
Amie Siegel, Fetish, 2016, exhibition view, Simon Preston Gallery, New York. Courtesy Simon Preston Gallery, New York.
Known for her layered, meticulously constructed works that consider the undercurrents of value systems, cultural ownership and image-making, Siegel works across film, video, photography, performance and installation.
What have you been doing all your life?
Oh, I secured a really nice piece of property. Unaffordable by now.
Oh, I secured a really nice piece of property. Unaffordable by now.
Quarry, 2015, projected at cinematic scale in the SLG’s main gallery, traces the excavation of marble from the deepest underground quarry in the world to its almost inevitable use in the modern luxury apartments of Manhattan skyscrapers. Beautiful, formally rigorous, and pointedly underscored by dramatic orchestral sound, this moving image work draws us into a mesmerising exposé of the multi-layered relationships between art, labour and value.
Fetish, 2016, presented in the first floor galleries, delves further into the stratified relationships between culture, value, and material by focusing on Sigmund Freud’s personal collection of archaeological statues and artefacts. Filmed at the Freud Museum in north London, it portrays the annual nocturnal cleaning of the psychoanalyst's collection, suggesting an analogy between the careful, almost ritualistic removal of layers of dust from the objects and the intimate excavations and disclosures of analysis, both of which are normally hidden from view.
Proposing a conceptual link between Fetish and Quarry, Siegel presents a new work in the second upstairs gallery - a fragment of pink marble from the lobby of New York’s Trump Tower. Offered for sale on eBay immediately following the 2016 US election, the marble fragment was purchased by the artist. The fragment’s transformations, from having had a clear use within a building into an apparently functionless piece of rock, and then into a historic relic, are both continued and emphasised through its incorporation into Siegel’s work. Parallel narratives are therefore set in motion, both with the material concerns of Quarry, and the potentially infinite circular conversations around the themes of objecthood and desire explored within Fetish.
Fetish, 2016, presented in the first floor galleries, delves further into the stratified relationships between culture, value, and material by focusing on Sigmund Freud’s personal collection of archaeological statues and artefacts. Filmed at the Freud Museum in north London, it portrays the annual nocturnal cleaning of the psychoanalyst's collection, suggesting an analogy between the careful, almost ritualistic removal of layers of dust from the objects and the intimate excavations and disclosures of analysis, both of which are normally hidden from view.
Proposing a conceptual link between Fetish and Quarry, Siegel presents a new work in the second upstairs gallery - a fragment of pink marble from the lobby of New York’s Trump Tower. Offered for sale on eBay immediately following the 2016 US election, the marble fragment was purchased by the artist. The fragment’s transformations, from having had a clear use within a building into an apparently functionless piece of rock, and then into a historic relic, are both continued and emphasised through its incorporation into Siegel’s work. Parallel narratives are therefore set in motion, both with the material concerns of Quarry, and the potentially infinite circular conversations around the themes of objecthood and desire explored within Fetish.
More information
Venue
South London Gallery. 65-67 Peckham Rd. London SE5 8UH. United Kingdom
Dates
January 20–March 26, 2017
Hours.-
Tuesday–Sunday 11am–6pm,
Wednesday 11am–9pm
Amie Siegel
Amie Siegel’s (b. 1974, Chicago, USA) recent solo exhibitions include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the MAK, Vienna. Siegel has participated in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Hayward Gallery, London; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; MoMA PS1; MAXXI Museum, Rome; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Her work is in public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Her films have been screened at the Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and New York Film Festivals, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner-Künstlerprogramm and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulton Fellow at The Film Study Center at Harvard University, a recipient of the ICA Boston's Foster Prize, Sundance Institute and Creative Capital Awards.
