William Mackrell | Performances: Andipa, London

Andipa Contemporary, in collaboration with the Royal British Society of Sculptors, is proud to present a solo exhibition of William Mackrell, the winner of Spotlight 2013 Award for Video/Performance.

The epic and sublime are central to William Mackrell’s practice. His desire to challenge and struggle against his own endurance creates an unraveling process, which becomes itself the content. By using repetitive strategies in his actions, he measures the physicality of his presence and considers how the extraordinary can stem from these accumulative endeavours. Venturing between the plausible and the absurd, he stretches metaphorical actions to breaking point. Often humour arises through his encounter with the absurd.

He allows for the unexpected to enter into his work, rupturing the process to produce something new that can elevate the original intention. Mackrell also questions language’s inability to document the progression of human existence, particularly how the organic struggles to mould with the mechanical. On the preview of his exhibition with Andipa Gallery, Mackrell will present Deux Chevaux as a live event.

Lullaby brings together a selection of Mackrell’s latest works involving the use of his body to trace activities of searching, removing and adding. For Sleep, Mackrell laid carbon paper over his mattress to capture the aftermath of his subconscious movements at night. In Lip Sync the artist applies lipstick to his lips and mouths his artist statement into a sheet of drawing paper. At the end of each sentence Mackrell reapplies the lipstick as if taking a breath at a full stop and then continuing on. Exposed is a rayograph of his studio objects made whilst on residency in Vienna. After developing the photographic paper he proceeded to etch out the entire space around the objects to resemble his presence in the studio.