Lucy Gunning: In Passing

14 April – 1 May 2021

We are thrilled to present In Passing, a project by Lucy Gunning made for the space at PALFREY where she has been working intermittently over the past year. Gunning makes installations that juxtapose diverse material and spatial elements with what she calls a “prosaic relation to the performative”, such that their attendant actions are often integrated with their everyday surroundings. Working with moving image, objects, materials, surfaces, natural and artificial light, In Passing proceeds by inhabiting the space to explore the interplay of the building and the conditions of the time. Several of Gunning’s ongoing concerns are brought together here: behaviour, interacting with public and private space; the planned and unplanned affordances of built spaces; the slowing down of consciousness; the intangibility and temporality of light and the qualities of the present moment. These lead to the development of a series of interventions in relation to the ‘whole’ space and the transient natural light which constitute In Passing.

OPENING Wednesday 14 April, 3 – 8 pm

Lucy Gunning has shown extensively since her inclusion in New Contemporaries in 1994. Past exhibitions have included Big Bang, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2005; British Art Show 5, 2000-2001; Killing Time, White Columns, New York, 1997; and solo shows at Matt’s Gallery, London; Green Naftali, New York; City Racing, London; Spike Island, Bristol and elsewhere. Recent exhibitions include: ‘My Heart is like a Singing Bird’, The Bower, London, 2018; ‘[these roarers]’, Whitstable Biennale, 2018, with Bernice Donszelmann and Helen Robertson; ‘Plan Un-plan’, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, Greenwich University, 2017; ‘Then For Now’, Delfina Foundation, London, 2015. Residencies have included: Kenneth Armitage Foundation 2012-14, The Wordsworth Trust 2007, The British School in Rome 2001. She received The Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists in 2001. She is a Senior Lecturer at Chelsea College of Art, and the 2018-19 recipient of the Lorne Trust Scholarship. Lucy Gunning is represented by Matt’s Gallery, London.

photography: Damian Griffiths