On Growth and Form
08.06.07- 22.06.07
Featuring Andrew Chadwick, Alex Crocker, James Irwin, Jackson Sprague, Samuel Savage & Sarah Woodburn
On Growth and Form brought together work by six young, UK-based artists: Andrew Chadwick, Alex Crocker, James Irwin, Jackson Sprague, Samuel Savage and Sarah Woodburn. The show took its name from Darcy Thompson's book, written in 1917, analyzing biological processes in their mathematical and physical aspects. Since the publication of Darcy Thompson's book, the concept of growth has undergone serious revision, being denuded of its inherently positive connotations whilst, within Fine Art, faith in form, the form an artwork should take per se, has also been subject to sustained questioning and recapitulation.
On Growth and Form is taken by these artists as a provocation, approached in a variety of media using very different processes. As genetic engineering emerges as a reality rather than the subject of dystopian fantasy, the sense of 'growth' becomes increasingly equivocal. It is with the notion of growth and form in terms of mutation, corruption and transformation that these artists engage.
