Curated by Benet Spencer and Steven Rendall
This multi-stage project addressing the relationship between painting and collage is hosted in 3 venues in the UK and Australia.
Collision Drive 1
15 April - 21 May 2019
Wimbledon Space, UAL, London
Collision Drive 1, a 2-person exhibition of recent artwork by Steven Rendall and Benet Spencer held at the Wimbledon Space, London, is an exhibition addressing the relationship between painting and collage. Sampling, hybridity, faults in translation and a constructed aesthetic are shared between each practice, with artworks which are re-combinations of found images. The artists aim to highlight the construction and process of making, through paintings that thrive on accumulation, scale and density. Collision Drive 1 is accompanied by a catalogue published by UAL, which includes an essay by Phil King and a foreword by Geraint Evans.
Collision Drive 2
27 June - 18 July 2019
Project Space Plus, University of Lincoln
Project Space Plus is delighted to present Collision Drive 2, a 2-person exhibition by Steven Rendall and Benet Spencer which addresses the relationship between collage and painting, through presenting an assembly of gathered and selected images. Sampling, artistic identity and hybridity are investigated throughout, reflecting the artist’s aim to highlight the construction and process of making, through paintings that thrive on accumulation, scale and density.
Rendall and Spencer share an interest in the discourse surrounding contemporary painting which embraces the role of appropriation and the concept and practice of collage. Steven Rendall’s practice is founded on painting but has a history of expanding into digital and VHS based audiovisual realms. Rendall’s paintings formulate different ways that images can be translated and how the painted image differs from the source image. The scavenging, slicing and rearranging of the images continues throughout each stage of production and is evident in the finished work. In this exhibition, art auction catalogues are the source of multiple secondary images which are cut up and reassembled.
Benet Spencer works with a specific range of architectural forms and interior spaces, which embody archetypes that relate closely to the Modernist ideal and its influence on contemporary design, such as the open-plan interior/exterior space created in modern kitchen extensions, the museum or gallery space, or the designer café interior. Using Photoshop as a design tool, found images are combined to form imaginary spaces, made up of patterned surfaces, modernist furniture, and containing cultural artifacts such as sculptures or paintings.
The actual Collision Drive, referenced in the current title, is just to the east of John F Kennedy Road in Dubuque, Iowa. Neither Rendall of Spencer have been there, but they have both listened to Alan Vega’s 1981 record Collision Drive. The experimental music of Vega functions as another reference point for this project.
Collision Drive 3
11 Oct - 10 Nov 2019
RMIT Project Space, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
In October the project will expand to incorporate the work of five more artists, including: Stephanie Leigh, Andrea Medjesi-Jones, Laurence Noga, Bronte Webster and Hiroe Komai.
