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| Opening Sat 30 Jun 2018, 7pm |
"There is a collaborative impulse behind James Richards and Leslie Thornton’s SPEED, one that renders the lone paranoid monologue of anxious speculation into a dialogic practice. In the process of realising SPEED, Richards and Thornton have been concerned with a number of psychic and temporal states, rushes of interconnectedness and scientific wonder, as well as a sense of ecological dread and anxiety. The exhibition takes the form of two major new commissions by Richards and Thornton, alongside a show-within-the-show convened by Richards with works by Horst Ademeit, Adelhyd van Bender, Bruce Conner, Emily Feather, Terence McCormack, Jeff Preiss and Jens Thornton.
There is an atmosphere of obsessive energy in SPEED, a recurring fascination with rays, of systematic sorting and recording of experience, and with mind altering effects and rituals. A number of the works in the group exhibition were made against a backdrop of apprehension and self-destruction during the Cold War. There is a sense of frantic repetition, labour and a command to activity, which van Bender described as ‘Divine Drudgery’. It is a spirit also present in Bruce Conner’s psychedelic inkblot drawings. The oscillation between an ordering impulse, and the relinquishing of control is a recurring feature of SPEED, one that appears both in the group exhibition and in the newly realised works..."
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