Bodies in Space, Mirror,Plymouth 27.11.2021- 26.02.2022

MIRROR presents Bodies in Space, a group exhibition curated by Ben Borthwick.

Nicola Bealing / Flo Brooks / Andrea Büttner / Andrew Pierre Hart / Nick Jensen / Claudette Johnson / Joy Labinjo / Bruno Pacheco / Charmaine Watkiss

Bodies in Space presents work by artists using the figure in painting and drawing to question and understand how we occupy, move through and negotiate the public and private spaces of daily life. The exhibition also reflects how figurative painting and drawing becomes more visible at times of wider social and political change.

This exhibition, itself hugely delayed due to the Covid 19 pandemic, has been adapted to reflect on the impact of social distancing and the wider disruption of social conventions on issues of representation and equality.

Some artists in this show use the figure in allegorical ways while others treat the figure as an apparition emerging from abstraction. In spite of these differences in approaches, the disjunction between the body, space and time is a common thread across works and forms the basis of this exhibition.

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Ben Borthwick is an independent Curator and Head of Creative Programme at KARST. He combines working internationally with grass roots artist development and community engagement in Plymouth. He was previously Artistic Director of Plymouth Arts Centre, CEO of Artes Mundi and Assistant Curator at Tate Modern.

 

(Image : ‘Dirty Man, Clean Man’ –  oil on linen 121x91cm 2014)