Time Has Burned Catalogue

TIME HAS BURNED

Curated

Willesden Gallery

16th - 27th April 2024

timehasburnedexhibition

by Emi Kubota, Mingzhang Sun

Awindspinnerhasfallen

by Paul O’Kane for ‘Time Has Burned’, curated by Emi Kubota and Mingzhang Sun

Last night, I must have slept too hot, too heavy. It’s difcult to judge the end of winter and the beginning of spring. To cool down I take my morning grapefruit out into the yard and notice that a wooden wind spinner that has hung here for many years has fallen to the ground. I try to rescue and re-hang it, but the thread has rotted and can no longer be tied. And so, I leave it lying, one more job to be done, when the right time comes.

Te schedule for writing this text has become mixed up, and now I don’t have much time. But writing and time are strange relations. It can take a few minutes to read what has taken weeks or months to write, and the opposite can also be true. Te works in this show are hugely varied. It’s hard to bring them together under a little parasol of words like this. Some seem so subtle and serene, others raw, rambunctious and bold. And yet I feel I see the artists’ selves, their spirits or identities, through these diferences, or in the diferences themselves. Te works act as stand-ins for the artists in their absence; each practice is a cypher or surrogate for an undefnable self. In this way the relation of art, to artist and to audience might provide an illustration of Ma, the Asian concept favoured by the curators, relating to the quiet power of negative space, the powerless power of absence. Ma may also be the space I occupy in my search for words that might protect, surround, justify or frame – but never explain. And always without replacing, supplanting or crudely flling spaces opened up by the gesture of this exhibition – which is, thus far, still a proposition.

Time has passed since I began writing. My schedule is mixed up, and according to practical, utilitarian time I should be in a hurry. And yet I am strangely calm, as if the spirit of the task, the time of the exhibition, and the vision of the curators pervade, and link my mind to my fngertips as they play across the QWERTY keys, tapping familiar letters like little drums, sending out a rhythmic sound, a communication that goes beyond words.

I hesitate, and this becomes a gap, a break, a negative space determining the end of one paragraph and the start of another. Now I note that the margins of my page are generous. A student recently told me that margins may have been deployed to stop mice from nibbling treasured books all the way into their text. Ever since, I see margins in a new light, as light, brightly illuminated spaces crucial to the preservation of the words. It’s true that these spaces around and between, within every letter and all around the edges, enable communication.

And so, perhaps it is here, and only here, in this emptiness and absence, within this would-be Ma, that I might hope to collect, evaluate, describe and position these diverse and heterogenous works; this exhibition, which does not yet exist as I write but which resides, virtually sprung, waiting in the desires of its curators and contributors, waiting in the empty gallery space, and in this unfnished writing. Te show waits to occur in an event that will soon sink into history, story and memory. I must fnish my writing. I must fx the wind spinner. I must clean my breakfast bowl.

Te “Time Has Burned” exhibition showcases the exceptional works of a group of emerging to mid-level artists, based in London and belong to diverse backgrounds. Tis exhibition delves into various themes such as spirituality, displacement, and the interconnectedness of human and natural elements, making it an intriguing and thought-provoking experience.

Te main objective of this exhibition is to showcase works that reimagine time and distance and break away from the limitations of physical space. Our inspiration for this exhibition comes from Etel Adnan’s poem “Time” and the Japanese philosophical concept of Ma, which refers to the limitless potential for growth without boundaries.

Te original group of artists has now grown to thirteen, who continue to challenge and break the norms in art. We came together to support and inspire each other, and our open discussions continue to lead us on the path of creativity. Each artist has interpreted the central theme through their unique lens by implementing the essence of poetry and linking personal experiences to thoughtful creative works.

When it’s vanishing,Ruiyao Zhu, 2023

Te exhibition explores topics such as female identity, mysticism, the human connection to the environment, and the interplay between memory and the psyche. Te resulting works evoke a sense of bodily and spatial experience, encouraging viewers to engage with the art on a deeper level. Works include painting, photography, sculpture, ceramics, crafs, video, mixed media, and printmaking.

Dr Ziyang Chen

Dr Ziyang Chen (b.1992), a Chinese artist based in London and currently studying Master of Sculpture in Royal College of Art. Having lived in the London for 10 years, Ziyang has developed a unique and integral insight into the likenesses and contradictions of both Chinese and British culture. His practice focuses primarily on sculpture; conceptualising contemporary queer masculinity and body, provoking the stereotype about the beauty hierarchy of East Asian queer in Western society, deconstructing and constructing of social norms and boundaries in addition to opposing and contrasting force.

@its.ziyang

dr.chen.ziyang@gmail.com

Do you want me or do you not 2, Metal rods, cement, sand, plaster, pearls, nails, cable tiles,HWD 200x45x65cm,2024 Ziyang Chen_Do you want me or do you not 1 Metal rods, cement, sand, plaster, pearls, nails, cable tiles,HWD 50x75x40cm,2024

Emi Kubota

Japanese-Indonesian artist and flmmaker who visualises storytelling and explores gender dynamics and female identity in space. Her works encompass media art, flm, and conceptual art. Her art delves into the signifcance of beauty and its role in the order of capitalism, concentrating on imperfections and the bland through gestures of redaction, concealment, destruction of physical materials and the exploration of colour. She draws inspiration from feminist writers Bell Hooks, Griselda Pollock and Chandra Mohanty. Her works capture the confnement and conformity in the physical space and mentality of a female. She graduated from Chelsea College of Art with BA in Fine Art in 2022. Her recent exhibitions include ‘De-Oriented’ at Ugly Duck, ‘Diaspora and Belonging’ at Mother London, UK and ‘Jewel, Pearl’ BUoY Arts Centre Tokyo, Japan which she also curated.

@rsln_____k

https://emirosalinakubota.art/home/ Emi_kubota@outlook.com

, print on matte

Implicit

paper,14.8x21cm,2024

Emily Davidson

Ceramic artist Emily Davidson creates sculptural ceramics and large wheel thrown vessels in stoneware and porcelain. Te relationship with the materials is central to the artist’s work; processing her own clay, burnishing vessels and obsessive and sometimes chaotic surface designs refect a primitive connection to both her inner and outer landscapes.

An exploration and celebration of our combined ancestral connection to the Earth, drawing on Irish folklore and myths of Celtic Goddesses that encapsulate the land, the seasons, and tales of personal turmoil and exultation creates the narrative of her work. She studied Fine Art at the UAL UCA Farnham, she studied sculpture and drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna, Italy and graduated from Bristol in Fine Art and Visual Culture in 2018. She’s been shown at the Create Centre, Spike Island and Maze Studio in Bristol, London Lighthouse Gallery and the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna.

@a.piece.of.our.earth

emilydavidsonbrett.pottery@gmail.com

Sexy little puppet, glazed earthenware sculptures, 30×25 cm,2023

Joy Baek

Joy Baek (she/her/hers) is a Korean artist primarily based in London and Glasgow. She graduated with a Fine Art (BA) from Chelsea College of Arts in London and completed her MFA at the Glasgow School of Art in 2022. Baek’s latest exhibitions include ‘Love and Legacy: Our Grandmothers’ at French Street Studio and Gallery in Glasgow, 2022, and‘Crafed Selves: Te Unfnished Conversation’ at St. Andrews Museum and Kirkcaldy Gallery in St. Andrews, 2023; her frst solo show ‘ Te Forest of Red Kindness’ at Glasgow Project Room, 2024, which featured her newest series of sculptures titled <Te Forest of Red Kindness> and her performative sculpture <When the Permanent Waves Are Walking Towards Us>. Baek received the Gilbert Bayes Grant in 2022, collaborated with curator Cat Dunn during the 2022 Resilient Residency run by Cabbage Arts in Glasgow, and was chosen for the residency program at CCA Glasgow for 2023.

@fickering2eyes

https://joybaek.cargo.site/ joybaek9327@gmail.com

The Forest of Red Kindnes ,milliput, wood stick, plaster, charcoal, resin and wire,2024 Madeleine Jarvis

London based artist who works predominantly with paint. Painting is her primary artistic language, and like a language it has diferent dialects and ways of communication. Exploring these diferent visual techniques is core to her practice. Jarvis likes to think of it as, thinking through the medium, the paint leads her just as much as she guides it.

Te paintings of her ‘Spaces’ series lay out an autobiographical narrative, working from old photographs that document the artist’s family history, all of which were taken on flm cameras. Te flm photographs are evocative of a certain time, but they equally have a timeless quality that speaks of the past. Jarvis fnds something in the act of painting these images, in using marks to express her relationship to the images and spaces, which balance between a clinical and honest rendering, an almost idealised reimagining of the past. Communicating through spaces, the places that people inhabit is the core of Jarvis’practice.

Te spaces that anticipate human fgures and presence through interior and rivate rendering of domestic environments. Tese spaces speak of nostalgia, and alonging for moments past. Tey are portraits without people, and the lack of the person allows the viewer to bring themselves into the painting. Tere is an uncanniness there, in the viewer’s presence in the image. Te uncanny is another central aspect to her work, calling upon feelings that are both comforting and disquieting.

@madeleineJarvis_ www.madeleinejarvis.com maddie.jarvis1478@gmail.com

Dining Room,80x120cm,Oil on canvas, 2023 Kitchen,oiloncanvas,80x120cm,2023 Micha Horgan

An Iranian-Irish multidisciplinary artist working with sculpture, painting, traditional print methods and storytelling. Micha grew up in Hackney and was infuenced by his inherited cultures, the rave scene, and by a strong sense of disjunct between a modern socialised self and a primordial or ‘ancient self’. His atavistic works map a young man’s artistic journey, his interest with the human condition,notions of playfulness (as discussed in Caillois’ text Man, Games and Play) and artistic infuences which include absurdist writer Albert Camus, Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat through to early Persian tableaux, Mesopotamian murals, and ancient Myth. His frst solo exhibition, ‘Curdled Bones’, showed at Hackney Gallery in 2023. He also exhibited work at Lighthouse Gallery, and at group shows in Soho and Peckham. Micha won a WritingMagazine story competition and is published in SofPunkMagazine and the EmberChasmReview. His articles have featured in TeTime and Vice. Micha recently completed a scholarship placement at Faber&Faber’s Novel Writing Course.

@MichaHorgan

@HorganMicha

Michahorgan@hotmail.co.uk

Transhuman Windturbine Cyootsie Faerie Sean Without Eyes and Ears PeenOak Yo Twisted Monk Red White and Who 30x20cm, Bio Smrt Plastic and acrylic paint,2024

Mingzhang Sun

Chinese-born multidisciplinary artist based in London. He is qualifed in all classical styles of Chinese and European painting, digital design, fashion design, costume design, sof sculpture, installation and performance art. His painting style is an amalgamation of fgurative expressionism and neo-romanticism that incorporates Chinese landscape painting with the aesthetics of Chinese calligraphy. His use of fgural distortion and elongated forms to evoke sexuality and heartbreak are reminiscent of Egon Schiele; the mood and feel of his paintings have parallels with the palpable solitude, unwavering hope and reverence for the life of Van Gogh.

He graduated from the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and the University of the Arts in London. Among other awards, Ming was the recipient of the 2013 CAFA President’s Choice Award, the 2017 UAL Excellence in Design and Realization for Performance Award and the winner of New Zealand Wearable Awards show 2018.

@themingzhangsun

www.mingzhangsun.com

ming@mingzhangsun.com

TATATA,oil on fabric,135x180cm,2021 Ruby Khan

London-based abstract artist who envisions celebrating; the physical and emotional journey she has undertaken throughout her life. She uses deconstruction line art that reforms the city’s architectural landscape to refect its mental atmosphere. She intends to use abstract shapes, colours and expressive mark makings to evoke power through abstraction using the intuitive feel for bright, optimistic colours and shapes; her diverse art practices in printmaking, painting, photography, sculpture and installation. Te theme is related to how time has burnt through her past journey overcoming many obstacles in her life.

Ruby studied Art and Design at Uxbridge College; graduated with a degree in Fine Arts BA from the University of East London in 2021.

@rubykhansartlife

www.linktr.ee/rubykhansart rubykhanart@gmail.com

Mix media collage of screenprint & photographic prints

Ruiyao Zhu

London-based multidisciplinary artist specialising in printmaking, drawing, illustration, painting, and sculpture is interested in the subconscious, dreamland and psychology. Her practice investigates the association between consciousness and subconsciousness, looking into the boundaries of two completely diferent worlds from the perspective of psychology, exploring a visual language to create a diverse understanding of the inner world, anxieties and fears that arise from dramatic changes in contemporary society, returning to the essentials of being human. She combined prints to extend her practical research based on personal experiences and social phenomena narratives from mystery, grotesque, bizarre, unreal, and unexpected combinations.

@oayoayuhz

ivyzhuruiyao@gmail.com

Dominated by,Etching and Aquatint on Somerset paper,45x38.5cm,2022 Unexpected Occasion,Etching and Aquatint on Somerset paper ,47.5x40cm 2022 Toni Martinez Solera

Since graduating from Chelsea College of Art, Toni Martinez Solera has been working tirelessly in diferent media. From painting exquisite portraits of his friends to his recent series of photo self-portraits, his work values simplicity; shunning what is complex or fraught.

Tis recent series continues his interest in abstract, expressive mark making and his fascination for innocent-looking fgures in bare, nameless spaces. He ofen combines what could be described as the raw gestures of a Dubufet etching with the geometric precision of a Richard Smith abstract. Martinez Solera creates thoughtful dialogues between two very diferent genres, inviting the viewer to shif between an attachment to a linear minimalist aesthetic and the freedom of a more spontaneous black line. His work is contained and yet also explores a latent spontaneity. Martinez-Solera and Wall refect the philosophical and playful contradictions in how we experience and respond to a damaged world.

@tonimartinezsolera

martinezsolera@me.com

Portraitapp 1, oil on canvas, 30x40cm,2023 Portraitapp 3, oil on canvas, 30x40cm,2023 Portraitapp 2, oil on canvas, 30x40cm,2023 Portraitapp 4, oil on canvas, 30x40cm,2023

Vincenzo Muratore

Vincenzo Muratore believes that individuals are composed of the same essence as their environments and histories, carrying within themselves the amalgamation of bodies and aspirations accumulated over time. Tis belief propels his enduring quest to understand the complexities of human identity, cultural dynamics, and societal evolution. Hailing from Sicily, a region imbued with a rich cultural legacy and marked by profound contradictions, his upbringing has profoundly infuenced his artistic perspective. Born in 1985, Vincenzo has personally grappled with the repercussions of cultural norms and their psychological impact.

His experiences and struggles have ignited his curiosity in exploring the intricate interplay between memory and human psyche. Vincenzo’s artistic style refects an interdisciplinary approach, blending elements of tradition, nature, and architectural geometries. He utilizes art installations and performances as mediums to convey his artistic vision. Employing a methodological process that bridges the past with the present, the tangible with the intangible, he utilizes digital 3D modeling and traditional sculpting techniques in materials such as resin, marble, and bronze.

Beyond his artistic endeavors, Vincenzo is committed to revitalizing rural areas in Sicily through regeneration projects. Inspired by the philosophies of Hundertwasser, he endeavors to cultivate a sense of community by repurposing abandoned spaces. @vincezonmuratoreartist

the ritual _01,video,2024

www.vincenzomuratore.it vincenzomuratore.pa@gmail.com

Yiwen Li

Artist and curator based in London. Her work guides the alternative world and the psychology of religion, addressing the connection between science and mysticism, technology and magic, and instrumental and value rationality. She uses a variety of mediums ranging from sculpture and painting to video, flm and performance. She is interested in bridging the gap between Eastern and Western cultural frameworks and reconfguration of reality.

@yiwen.lii

www.yiwenliart.com

yiwenliart@gmail.com

I see fre No.1, oil on canvas, 30x40cm,2023 I see fre No.3, oil on canvas, 120x90cm,2023 Yvonne Devine

Yvonne, a London-based, mid-career multi-media artist, uses found materials and painted canvases to craf narratives that explore selfood and the spaces we inhabit. Her work, informed by her background in Conceptual Art and Interior Design, weaves together personal stories with evocative imagery. Selected for the NHS College Hospital’s Climate Change Reduction Competition and showcased at the Irish Embassy in London, Yvonne’s art is a space for contemplation, inviting viewers on a journey of self-discovery. Trough her multifaceted pieces, Yvonne delves into the complexities of identity, place, and the ever-evolving narratives that shape our lives.

@yvonnedevineartworks devineyvonne@yahoo.com

Illuminate,Acrylic,texture on canvas,50x50cm,2024 Construct,Acrylic on canvas,60x60cm,2024

In the proximity of love, dispersion, refraction, time no longer measures itself against the body... there is blood on certain roads and the perverse friendship of death

Tere is noise in our hearts an imperfect breathing attached to ligaments: dull pain in the wrists and the folds

Describe the body if you can and you will see how unlikely your soul is matter being our sole possession

Like the half-light where the Pacifc sleeps, its solitude is made of gray forms it looks for its metaphors in electronics, it only lives in the pallor of signs

She, in the rose-colored song of a bedroom, a deserted love, and the lost time of trees... at the edge of the jungle don’t enter the sacred element of the present Time has burned that’s why in the naked lightness of the clouds we are held back by the nocturnal

Adnan, E. (2019) Time . Nightboat Books

now grown to thirteen, who continue to challenge and break together to support and inspire each other, and our open on the path of creativity. Each artist has interpreted the central by implementing the essence of poetry and linking personal creative works. The exhibition explores topics such as female connection to the environment, and the interplay between resulting works evoke a sense of bodily and spatial experience, with the art on a deeper level. Works include painting, ceramics, crafts, video, mixed media, and printmaking.