10 February — 24 March 2013
Daily 12noon-5pm

9 February, 6-8pm: Relatively Absolute Exhibition Launch
Saturday 23 March: Relatively Absolute Events

Click on the image for installation shots of the exhibition

Relatively Absolute is a group exhibition consisting of newly commissioned work, as well as the source material that has informed it’s making, by the twelve artists, and the writer and musician who worked at Wysing during 2012 in our residency programme.

The exhibition gives an insight not only into the ambitious work produced at Wysing but also the research, discussion and exchange of ideas that happens during residencies at our rural site outside Cambridge. Central to the Relatively Absolute is the idea that hidden systems and structures can be used to uncover meaning, narrative and paradox.

Relatively Absolute includes moving image and sound-based pieces - a new, silent, single-screen monitor-based work by 2012 Turner Prize winner Elizabeth Price and a site-specific sound work composed by musician in residence Luke Abbott, available to listen to whilst walking Wysing’s grounds.  Sculptural works (many of which came out of work made in Wysing’s ceramics studio) include Emma Hart’s visceral forms that ‘spit out’ photographs and regurgitate ideas, and two biomorphic bronze-glazed ceramics by Salvatore Arancio.

Nicolas Deshayes presents a new sculpture of three steel framed tables with tops made from vacuum-formed yams, mirroring the tables of clay test pieces he produced whilst working at Wysing. Edwin Burdis’s table made from a painting of a fig is exhibited alongside a text-painting based on his recently composed opera, performed at Wysing in early January. Two new works by Jonathan Baldock combine the tradition of abstract painting with ceramic forms presented on a boldly coloured surface.

Flora Parrott contributes a new shrine-like installation, whilst Stuart Whipps shows new prints of casting moulds produced in Mexico for large concrete structures. Jess Flood-Paddock’s inverted clavicle sculpture also takes casting from another new work as a starting point, and Philomene Pirecki has made an installation from photographs, and the photographs of photographs.

Text works also play an important part in the exhibition, with a new text by Ed Atkins produced a small publication and a wall-based piece by Nilsson Pflugfelder. And Patrick Coyle’s year-long residency culminates in a publication which, like the exhibition, uses oblique references as well as unusual literary perspective, to connect the influences, incidents and his own experience of all the artists, artworks and events that have taken place during his twelve months at Wysing.

he source material contributed by the artists remains unattributed, inviting the viewer to draw out their own conclusions about conversations and research that has gone on during the making of the work. Material includes Palaeolithic hand axes c. 700,000 - 40,000 years BC, a photographic reproduction of a Henry Moore maquette, an unpublished manuscript of 1970's experimental writing by an unknown writer found in a London junk market, the complete works of Gilbert Sorrentino, a recording of a hand dance by Tilly Losch performed in 1933, a selection of spiritual merchandise and a playable LP of BBC Radiophonic Workshop sound effects from 1976.

A review of the exhibition by Maggie Gray for this is tomorrow is here.

Curated by Gareth Bell-Jones. Supported with funding from Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Henry Moore Foundation.

On Sunday 24 March, 2-4pm we will be hosting an Arts Award Support Session for young people on BTEC and Creative Media Diploma courses working towards their Bronze/Silver/Gold Arts Award. This free session coincide with the final day of the exhibition  and we invite you to review and discuss the exhibition, as well as take part in a Q&A session with a Wysing artist about careers in the arts.