Chandelier Projects is pleased to present an exhibition of newly commissioned work by British artist Coco Crampton and Polish artist Agata Madejska. The exhibition, curated by independent curator Gareth Bell-Jones, contains new lighting structure works by Crampton and sculptural and photographic work by Madejska.
Through the artwork of both artists, Kingly Things articulates how the meanings of objects can be dissolved and re-imagined. The title is a term coined by social anthropologist Max Gluckman to define those objects which perform a symbolic inventory of a society: public lands, monuments, the paraphernalia of power and ritual objects. Over the course of their existence objects move in and out of the commodity state over the course of their use-life. ‘Kingly Things’ are objects diverted from use as commodities to protect whatever value or symbolic power the object may transfer. Whereas Madejska sees objects as a space for the projection of ideas, Crampton sees them as crystalisations of values. However, through the use of different media, both artists consider objects as flexible carriers of cultural meaning; as abstractions of realities and events.
Coco Crampton’s work is concerned with how ideological or social meaning can be transmitted through an aesthetic language. For Kingly Things Crampton has produced English Echoes, a series of suspended sculptures based on specific examples of lighting design. Works include a re-interpretation of one of the Lighting Satellites produced in 1983/4 for Peter Stringfellow’s nightclub The Hippodrome and a copy of Quentin Bell’s thrown ceramic lampshade made in 1950 for the dining room at Charleston House, Sussex.
Agata Madejska’s work refers to the symbolic structures of public space as mirrors for contemporary society. Alongside the presentation of a seven metre long photographic wall installation, Memorial A-Z, Madejska has produced the table installation Factum, whereby photographs of the reliefs on the sarcophagi of the Soviet War Memorial constructed in 1949 for Berlin’s Treptower Park are presented
as clear acrylic table surfaces.
A text by Gareth Bell-Jones will accompany the artists’ work.
About the artists
Coco Crampton (b.1983) is a London based artist. Crampton was born in London and graduated from Norwich School of Art in 2005 and from The Royal Academy Schools in 2014. She served on Outpost gallery’s steering committee in Norwich from 2007. In 2014 she received the Patricia Turner Prize and was awarded a Print Fellowship at The RA Schools. Recent solo and two person exhibitions include: Handles on Romance & Other Girls also Common Tongue, at The Minories Galleries, Colchester and Protected Space with Jonathan Baldock at Belmacz Gallery, London. Other exhibitions include Cassius Clay at Marcelle Joseph Projects; Fourth Drawer Down, Nottingham Contemporary; A Thing is a Thing is a Thing, The Minories Galleries; Slipped, Wysing, Cambridge; Bonne Bouche, The Cut, Halesworth; and Swing, Outpost, Norwich.
Agata Madejska (b.1979) is a London based artist. Madejska was born in Warsaw and graduated from Folkwang University of Arts, Essen, Germany in 2007 and in 2010 from Royal College of Art in London. In 2008 she was awarded the renowned Contemporary German Photography grant by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen-Halbach Foundation and in 2011 the Emerging Artist Award of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Recent exhibitions include Conflict, Time, Photography at Tate Modern; Form, Norm, Folly at the Krefelder Kunstverein; Twisted Entities at Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen; Man and his Objects, Museum Folkwang, Essen; Sunah Choi & Agata Madejska, Kunstverein Friedrichshafen; Made in Germany Zwei, Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover; Menos tiempo que lugar, Palacio National de las Artes, Buenos Aires; reGeneration2, Musée de l’Elysée; Lausanne and Aperture, New York; and New Contemporaries at the ICA, London.
