Brookfield Properties X AWITA: Beyond the Matrix
In a new partnership with Brookfield Properties, AWITA members had the opportunity to curate two sculpture exhibitions at 100 Bishopsgate from February to September 2024
100 Bishopsgate is one of the many premier real estate properties developed and managed by Brookfield Properties. With a focus on maximising the tenant experience, they believe in the unique ability of art and culture to transform spaces, bring people together and provide inspiration. This partnership continues their interest and commitment to the visual arts and supporting the work and labour of female creatives by offering the opportunity for AWITA members to curate the 100 Bishopsgate ground floor space.
In December 2023, proposals were submitted in response to the theme “Beyond the Matrix.” This curatorial narrative draws from the significant feminist legacy of the London-based feminist architects' practice Matrix, who in the 1980s foregrounded gender issues in the design of the built environment. Building upon this legacy, the Matrix thus becomes the imaginary place where cultural innovation happens, and 100 Bishopsgate is the space where everybody is welcome to experience and connect with it. By placing art within the lobby of shared-use work spaces, Brookfield celebrates the office space as alternative galleries, giving workers and visitors a moment for looking and a reminder to pause – if only for a moment.
Jodie Carey was the first selected artist whose work, curated by Eve Miller (of gallery Edel Assanti), was exhibited from the 5th of March to September 2024. Amelia Bowles, curated by Millie Jason Foster (Founder of Gillian Jason Gallery), will have a new body of work installed from September 2024 to February 2025. The 2024 judging panel was Helen Pheby, Associate Director, Programme at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, artists Jane and Louise Wilson, Nancy Durrant, Culture Editor of the Evening Standard, Sigrid Kirk, Co-Founder AWITA and Saff Williams, Curatorial Director Brookfield Properties Europe. They chose work that responds to the geometries of the architecture and the matrices of the building as a public realm and site for new connections.
Jodie Carey February - September 2024
London-based artist Jodie Carey's sculptural installations explore the universal human urge to make an impression on our surroundings. 100 Bishopsgate provides an evocative new context for three of Carey's installations, Stand (2017), Found (2018), and Untitled (2019), which have been reconfigured to respond directly to the space's open design and porosity. Carey’s work adopts culturally universal, age-old artistic methods of creation, often evoking ritualistic or primitive traditions. Her work emphasizes the relationship between object making and commemoration, whilst also looking to the physical world as a repository of material memory. Carey says: “juxtaposing crafts traditionally associated with women allows me to make work that offers a counterpoint to the traditional idea that sculpture needs to be heavy, solid, carved or cast, but instead can be sewn or woven, made by women and created in places outside the studio”.
At once, the industrial and abstract 'Stand' (2017) was created by casting timber salvaged from the V&A's cast courts, lifting them out to form rudimentary moulds, which are then cast in plaster. They bear remnants of the earth, stone and plant roots, which were absorbed in the process. Large-scale urns from the series Found (2018), created as a special commission for The Foundling Museum were made by submerging giant rolls of hessian fabric into the ground and pouring liquid plaster into the imprints. A large freestanding work on a frame is made from strips of fabric dipped in plaster, woven and coloured with slight brush marks of chalk and pencil across each, revealing the wear and tear of labour and the passage of time by mark making.
To celebrate Carey's work and International Women's Day, a preview and panel discussion titled “Motherland” was hosted on the 5th March 2024. The panel of Carey, Prue Freeman, Director at Daisy Green, Kate Hart, CEO EC Business Improvement District, Primera and moderator Nancy Durrant, culture journalist, broadcaster and author of The London Culture Edit, shared their experiences of combining a career in the creative and business worlds with parenting.
Established in London, Edel Assanti works with international artists whose practices engage with the social, cultural or political realities of the moment in which they live. Their programme’s tendency towards interdisciplinary, research-led work demonstrates how artists are uniquely positioned to witness and distil the complex narratives that define our era. Their premises play host to a dynamic events programme parallel to gallery exhibitions: talks, performances, screenings, and live music.
Found (2018) by Jodie Carey
Stand (2017), by Jodie Carey
Amelia Bowles September 2024 - February 2025
Curated by Millie Jason Foster (Founder of Gillian Jason Gallery), will be installed in September 2024. The new commission ‘Komorebi’ was inspired by the Japanese word for sunlight filtering through trees. Keep an eye on socials for more announcements.
