DOUGLAS WHITE 'NEW SKIN FOR AN OLD CEREMONY' EXHIBITION AT PARADISE ROW, LONDON

“While traveling in East Africa in 2001 I came across the remains of an elephant. There was little left as it had been mostly scavenged. All that remained were a scattered arrangement of bones and its vast deflated skin, draped and folded like a collapsed tent.

The image of that scene has always stayed with me. It was a visceral encounter. Here was a body become landscape, a body both present and absent in which the distinction between the inner and outer had evaporated in the heat and decay. It was a body you could walk through.

I’ve always worked with material that was discarded or overlooked. But of all those objects that I ever encountered, this is the one I wanted most to possess, though how and in what way, I could never define or understand. It was, of course, a found object that was impossible to retrieve and probably for that reason, this dead and distant form has haunted me since. Shades and echoes of it have instead emerged elsewhere my work, in assembled hunks of trees that resembled parts of an elephant or the draped, melted skin of a vandalized plastic bin and most recently while I was building clay walls for a cast… As I worked a rolled-out slab of clay it begin to crease and crack and it became, in my mind’s eye, elephant skin… After so long I felt, at least in part, able to recuperate something of this strange, lost encounter and of the unreasoned desire for this abject form"

/ DOUGLAS WHITE









/ PHOTOGRAPHS BY MONIKA BIELSKYTE FROM SOME/THINGS MAGAZINE ISSUE001 & ISSUE002 CONTRIBUTOR DOUGLAS WHITE's SOLO EXHIBITION NEW SKIN FOR AN OLD CEREMONY AT Paradise Row [74a Newman Street, London, W1T 3DB]


[New Skin for an Old Ceremony is Douglas White’s third solo show at Paradise Row.

White is a sculptor whose work is and is about, transformation, the transformation of materials, transformed states of being and the transformative potential of objects.

He works with the discarded and the lost, both materially and mnemonically, seeking, through the alchemy of the creative act, to recuperate value and perhaps to fix, in the material form of his work, for a while at least, time and memory – an exorcism incarnate.

In this exhibition White presents a series of large sculptures formed of expanses of skin-like, manipulated clay draped over armatures]

/ from www.douglaswhite.co.uk


PREVIEWS OF THE DOUGLAS WHITE FEATURES IN ISSUE001 & ISSUE002 ARE NOW ONLINE

SOME/THINGS MAGAZINE LAUNCH PARTY LAST WEEK IN LONDON

LAST THURSDAY WE DID THIS VERY PRIVATE & VERY COZY PARTY AT ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S STUDIO. ART PIECES OF ROB, MATTHEW STONE & DOUGLAS WHITE WERE THE DECOR & JARVIS COCKER WAS DJ OF THE NIGHT. MORE IMAGES SOON & IN THE MEANTIME SEE WHAT ANDERS OF DANSKMAGAZINE WROTE (HERE)


AIN'T NO PARTY LIKE SOME/THINGS PARTY

In these times of bans, censorship and political correctness it’s pretty refreshing just once in a while to return to one’s old, wicked ways. Last night we did exactly that, as Paris came to London (not that Paris – as if, to quote the Queen of the knee sock) to celebrate issues 001 and 002 of SOME/THINGS Magazine.

We were served what seemed like straight-up vodka (in long drink glasses – more is totes more) and encouraged to smoke – wait for it – inside (!). Jarvis Cocker and Matthew Stone DJ’ed while we all looked at art and gushed at our rediscovered glamorous decadence.

DOUGLAS WHITE

DOUGLAS WHITE IS ONE OF THE MOST TALENTED (YOUNG?) ARTISTS IN BRITAIN. WE HAVE COLLABORATED WITH HIM ON AN ARTICLE IF THUNDER WAS DESIRE IF DREAMS WERE LIGHTNING FOR SOME/THINGS MAGAZINE ISSUE001 / SHEDDING SNATCHES OF SONG LIKE PETALS & IN SOME/THINGS MAGAZINE ISSUE002 WE CONTINUE THE COLLABORATION SHOWING HIS NEWEST WORKS FROM MALTA & ELEPHANT TOTEM SONG WORKS IN DOUGLAS' LONDON EAST END STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHED BY MONIKA BIELSKYTE