Flowers Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of recent work by Tom Lovelace. This Way Up is the artist’s most comprehensive exhibition to date, featuring work from 2012-2015.

Working at the juncture between photography, sculpture and performance, Tom Lovelace’s interdisciplinary practice explores the fundamentals of photography by extending beyond traditional notions or boundaries of the medium. The architecture of time and light, along with an exploration of function and form are examined through unexpected manipulations of everyday materials and objects.

Marking a progression from his most recent series, the In Preparation photographs, in which Lovelace documented his attempts to tame and extend a collection of makeshift plinths, This Way Up presents a collection of work which manifests through a cross-referencing of image, object and the artist’s intervention.

“Lovelace trained as a fine art photographer, but has always been drawn to its intersection with other media, and is well aware of the resulting paradoxes and polemics. Most people experience R. Mutt’s Fountain (1917) via the photograph of Alfred Stieglitz, for example; and it is only via photographs that one can get an inkling of The Lovers (1988), a 90-day performance in which Marina Abramovic´ and Ulay approached each other from opposite ends of The Great Wall of China. Many continue to argue that the photograph is the mere skeleton after the feast and can be no substitute for direct viewing of a three-dimensional object, or a time-based performance. Lovelace’s solution is subtler and more elegant, involving finely crafted photographs-as-sculptures, or photographs-as-performances.” David Evans The raw, often found, materials that Lovelace draws our attention to are practical apparatus found in both the home and on the construction site. In This Way Up, these are reconsidered and reconfigured as photographic objects, creating conditions which disrupt both their original identity and application. Untitled Red (date unknown - 2014) is a naturally occurring photogram created using sections of felt, which were once hung on the exterior walls of a theatre in Umbria, Italy. The fabric had absorbed and soaked the sun’s rays over time, tracing the placards and signs placed upon them. Lovelace removed and reframed the panels, ‘fixing’ the image under ultra-violet protected glass. The initial period of exposure is unknown, rendering the work simultaneously bound by time and timeless.

Taking common support structures, such as the picture frame or the stool, Lovelace re-organizes and subverts their functional hierarchies. Works such as Stargazing, 2015 and Monteluco Sole, 2013 collapse the notion of the object’s usefulness altogether - their formal reduction showcases what Lovelace has called a further ‘controlled slippage’ into a minimal, abstract image plane.

The title of the exhibition references an instruction found on cardboard packaging. This is usually accompanied by two bold arrows pointing upwards, yet the works in this exhibition have no such accompanying signs. In This Way Up, Lovelace creates highly-orchestrated encounters between the fixed and the ephemeral, in which order, orientation and purpose are engaged in a continual state of push and pull.

ABOUT TOM LOVELACE

Tom Lovelace lives and works in London. He studied Photography at the Arts University Bournemouth, receiving First Class Honours; and Art History at Goldsmiths College, London. Recent exhibitions include Against Nature, (Photo50, London Art Fair, 2015); PROJECT 05 (Contemporary Art Society, London 2014), The Opinion Makers (Londonewcastle Project Space, London 2014), Blog Reblog (Austin Center for Photography, Texas 2014) Totem and Taboo (Unseen Amsterdam 2013), Uncommon Ground (Flowers Gallery, London 2012), Work Starts Here (Son Gallery, London 2012), Ristruttura (Project B Gallery, Milan 2012) and Gouge (Centre for Photography, Aarhus, Denmark 2011). Lovelace has previously exhibited at the Royal West of England Academy, ICA London, Oriel Davies Gallery and Karst.

Lovelace was the recipient of the Surface Gallery prize in 2008, and a Rhubarb Bursary with related exhibitions at Rhubarb East, Birmingham and Flowers Gallery, London in 2009. In 2012 Lovelace was awarded an Anna Mahler Residency in Spoleto, Italy, where he continues to research the history of the photogram and the concept of the readymade. Most recently he took residence in Aarhus, Denmark as part of the forthcoming European Capital of Culture Programme with a related exhibition and book forthcoming in 2017. Following This Way Up, Lovelace will embark on a residency at Lendi Projects, Switzerland, followed by group exhibitions at the New Art Centre, Salisbury and Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast. His book Work Starts Here is currently held in the Tate Artists’ Books Collection.