Rites of Passage

Rites of Passage

3 Hanover Square London, W1S 1HD, United Kingdom Tuesday, July 13, 2021–Saturday, September 4, 2021


untitled (arrows) by oliver clegg

Oliver Clegg

UNTITLED (arrows), 2020

Price on Request

caulerpa taxifolia  by sasha ferré

Sasha Ferré

Caulerpa Taxifolia , 2021

Price on Request

shoal by tahnee lonsdale

Tahnee Lonsdale

Shoal, 2021

Price on Request

a parcel of shelter by jeremy olson

Jeremy Olson

A Parcel of Shelter, 2021

Price on Request

Unit London is excited to announce a new group exhibition entitled Rites of Passage. After more than a year spent in a seemingly intermediate state, Rites of Passage explores notions surrounding the liminal space.

Typically, liminal spaces are characterised by transition, presented in the physical forms of corridors, stairways or elevators, serving as waiting rooms between one place and another. They are often empty and abandoned, devoid of human presence. Yet, despite their disquieting indistinctness, these spaces remain strangely familiar, inducing an oddly combined feeling of eeriness and nostalgia. However, the works presented in Rites of Passage frequently include a recognisable cast of characters, inhabiting these liminal spaces and contending with their own periods of change. In this sense, by combining representations of the architectural and the bodily, Rites of Passages, implies how liminality can affect our mental existence when we are left in a limbo between one stage in life and the next.

The very form and materiality of the artworks themselves reflect these notions of the intermediate. These works often blend hyper-realism with a surrealist visual language, leaving us questioning the familiar yet beguiling worlds they create. Recognisable symbols are often slightly distorted or eerily perfected, building up to construct a seemingly alternate reality characterised by ambiguity. Simultaneously detailed and dreamlike, these works only ever verge on the abstract, hovering between the mimetic and the non-representational.

Exhibiting artists: Alison Blickle, Chason Matthams, Chloe West, Clinton King, Daisy Dodd-Noble, Haeji Min, Henry Hudson, Jeremy Olson, Jinyong Park, Marty Schnapf, Millie Kelly, Muzae Sesay, Oliver Clegg, Rex Southwick, Sasha Ferré, Sholto Blissett, Simphiwe Mbunyuza, Suchitra Mattai, Tahnee Lonsdale