INTERIORITY COMPLEX - Guy Oliver & Finbar Ward
07/10/23 - 18/11/23
Interiority Complex is a duo exhibition by Margate based Guy Oliver and Wiltshire based Finbar Ward. When approaching the exhibition; both Oliver and Ward have explored the central motif of interior space in both a physical and metaphysical sense. Although the two artists have very distinctly separate practices, both the artists have been drawing from a shared pool of themes around home, family and memory to create a deeply personal and collaborative space.
Finbar Ward’s sculptural practice is led by a contrasting mix of raw physicality as well as very tender examinations of the issues and people in his life that he cares most about.
The ubiquitous presence of World of Interiors magazine acts as a very personal reference to Ward’s family. In the exhibition, Ward has gathered his mother’s extensive personal archive of the publication that she has collected for the past 35 years (with the ongoing dream of being a homeowner and living somewhere permanent). Taking inspiration from antiquity to the present day, he is drawn to the concept of home as a pillar of identity and an allegory to how we strive to build up our surroundings to become a representation of ourselves. The idealised and aspirational nature of them, being both at odds and entirely fitting, being displayed as they are, like architectural foundations.
In addition to this, Ward will be exhibiting a new sculpture made out of hand dug clay from the ground around his current home which has been pit fired in his garden. He will show a series of drawings that reference his various childhood bedrooms, as a new parent himself he has come to recognise his mother’s efforts to always make each bedroom ‘feel like home’.
The show contains works from both artist’s distant past and relics from their childhood/ad- olescence. For both men the subject of male adulthood, in connection to boyhood is directly explored, whether it is the imagined bedrooms strewn with NME magazines in Ward’s drawings or the adult tracksuit based on the same design that Oliver and his brothers wore as toddlers.
For Guy Oliver, the interiority of his own body becoming distorted and misaligned in his youth due to scoliosis provided a unique set of circumstances for his creative develop- ment. Oliver sees these experiences, especially his time in hospital for Scoliosis treatment, as being highly formative as an art practitioner. For Interiority Complex, He is presenting a new film, Badly Drawn Boys. It explores his and his brother’s experiences in adolescence that were punctuated by a series of hospitalisations. It acts as a reflection of how stories within families grow to become defining life narratives and how the interrup- tions of physical impairments can impact the development of young men.
The idea of the bedroom for Ward or the hospital bed for Oliver, acts as a point of refuge or station for reflection through the exhibition. There are also various allusions to ideas of containment, repair and stability with the Oliver’s spinal corrections and Ward’s crumbling brick column. The artists have also combined their personal archives of collected objects through the stack formations presented in the first room, all which have unique significance or resonance from respective pasts.
Guy Oliver (B.1982) graduated from the Royal College of Art (MA Painting) in 2015, his interdisciplinary practice employs video as well as painting, collage and performance. He was shortl- isted for the Jarman Award 2021 and was the recipient of the Jerwood/Film & Video Um- brella Award 2020. Solo exhibitions include We Put The Unction Into Erectile Dysfunction, Brooke Benington, London (2022), Hindsight, Jerwood Space, London (2020), And You Thought I Was Bad?, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2018). In 2021, together with his partner, Lindsey Mendick, he founded Quench Gallery in Margate to support artists in a post-pandemic era.
Finbar Ward (B.1990) graduated from The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, in 2013. Recent solo exhibition’s include Barely A Ripple at S.M.A.K Museum of Contempor- ary Art, Ghent, I Was Here, Geukens & De Vil, Antwerp, and an award winning sculptural installation at the 2021 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, London. Past exhibitions include Gather To Loose, Annely Juda Gallery, New Order II: British Art Today, Saatchi Gallery, London, 30 Years Of The Future, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, In Absence, FOLD Gallery, London, In Waiting, The British Embassy, Paris and Holiday From Rules, Kunstraum Gallery, London. Ward is a recent recipient of the DYCP Arts Council England grant.
