The Chopping Block in partnership with The Sassoon gallery is proud to present its latest exhibition, ‘Idle Hands: tricks in the art of doing’.

 

“Michel de Certeau, in L’Invention du quotidian, talks about ‘tricks in the arts of doing’ that enable individuals subjected to the global constraints of modern – especially urban – society to deflect them, to make use of them, to contrive through a sort of everyday tinkering to establish their own décor and trace their own personal itineraries.” Marc Augé

 

‘Idle Hands: tricks in the art of doing’, is the performative, the iterative, the worn, the studio, the artwork as the by-product of the act of ‘doing’.

 

Through selected works by David Ersser, Rachel Lowe and John Tiney, curator Andrew Marsh has looked to celebrate a practise that embraces ‘tinkering’ as the arch substance for creativity and output. While visually disparate, all of the exhibited works throughout ‘Idle Hands: tricks in the art of doing’ have been created and developed - not through a preconceived conceptual plan or design - but rather as the result of making for the sake of exploration, or of keeping one’s hands busy.

 

This can be seen in John Tiney’s ‘Shirts’ series where the very T-shirts worn by the artist in the studio are then stretched like canvases. The spot on a shirt used to clean a brush while painting becomes elevated and intervened with, allowing the artist to form new works in their own right.

David Ersser’s practice involves whittling balsa wood and the resulting sculptures are often replicas of the detritus of the studio surrounding him. A mop, boots or empty beer cans drunk while carving are transformed in to simulacra that embody the indulgent act of production through hours spent in the very studio the objects originate from. Rachel Lowe’s ’30 Days’ is the result of producing daily collages from the free magazines and newspaper handed out at train stations and abandoned on buses. They grow to form a calendar month on the wall, each day developing its own distinct identity and representing the ‘work’ undertaken for that day.