Maeve Brennan and Sophie Jung
opening 31 August, 6pm at A plus A Gallery, Venice
curated by School for Curatorial Studies Venice
A plus A Gallery and School for Curatorial Studies is excited to present an exhibition featuring works by the multidisciplinary artists Maeve Brennan and Sophie Jung.
From August 31 to October 31, visitors are invited to engage with a plurality of layered narratives in Maeve Brennan’s and Sophie Jung’s work through moving image, photography and sculpture. The exhibition brings together two practices that are both invested in an archaeology of “things”, uncovering the complex histories and narratives that objects carry and produce, exploring how the diverse perspectives placed upon them and expectations of them can be dismantled and reinformed.
Revealing the objects' relationship to our social functions as they relate to use, manipulation, monetary, symbolic and historical value, this show proposes to unveil and reveil all the mechanisms and magic tricks these objects perform to both represent and produce the worlds that we inhabit.
Maeve Brennan's practice explores the political and historical resonance of material and place. Working across moving image, installation, sculpture and printed matter, her works excavate layered histories, revealing the unseen or hidden structures that determine our lived environment. She develops long-term investigations led by personal encounters, often drawing on forms of expertise that encompass a material practice - geologists, archaeologists, conservationists - with a particular focus on repair.
Recent solo exhibitions include Horses and Angels, Galerie fur Gegenwartskunst, E-WERK Freiburg; An Excavation, Stanley Picker Gallery, London; Listening in the Dark, Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin; The Drift, Chisenhale Gallery, London; The Drift, Spike Island, Bristol; The Goods, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria.
Brennan’s work was featured in British Art Show 9 (2021 – 22) and her films have been screened internationally. She received the Jerwood/FVU Award (2018), Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists (2021) and was the Stanley Picker Fine Art Fellow (2019–22). She was awarded the Sainsbury Scholarship at the British School at Rome (2023) and is currently in residence at Somerset House Studios, London. She is an associate lecturer at Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths.
Sophie Jung works across text, sculpture and performance. Her sculptural work consists of bodies made up of found objects – often ones that have been rejected for their initial use. In her work, she connects their diverse qualities – be that phonetic, etymological, associative, material, formal, anecdotal, historical or personal to produce both assemblages as well as performable scripts, that aim at excavating minor legibilities. She combines them into fragmented bodies and narratives that amplify a critique of power debatably already inherent in the manner of their production and the fact of their existence.
Jung received her BFA from the Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam and her MFA from Goldsmiths, London. Recent solo exhibitions include Sanetroyem at E.A.Shared Space, They Might Stay The Night at Casino Luxembourg; Unsetting at Istituto Svizzero, Milan; Taxpayer’s’ Money for Frieze LIVE, Dramatis Personae at JOAN, LA; The Bigger Sleep at Kunstmuseum Basel; Come Fresh Hell or Fresh High Water at Blain Southern, London; Producing My Credentials at Kunstraum London; Paramount VS Tantamount at Kunsthalle Basel and Äppärät at Ballroom Marfa. In 2016 and in 2019 Sophie Jung won the Swiss Art Awards and in 2018 she was the recipient of the Manor Kunstpreis. From 2016 to 2019 she was on the jury of the Swiss Performance Art Award and is a new member to the board of Kunsthalle Basel.
The exhibition opens at 6pm at the A plus A gallery on the 31 st of August. A plus A gallery is hosting School for Curatorial Studies in their staging of this exhibition. The school consists of 10 international students working together in the curation and management of the show.
Partners
Thetis.spa
School for Curatorial Studies Venice
San Marco 3073
Venezia 30124
Tel: 041 2770466
A plus A gallery