Curatorview [Alfredo Cramerotti]

Anj Smith
Chiara Camoni
Nobuko Tsuchiya
November 9, 2019–March 1, 2020

MOSTYN
12 Vaughan Street
Llandudno LL30 1AB
United Kingdom

Anj Smith, Desert Epochs, 2014. Oil on linen. Copyright Anj Smith. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Anj Smith
This is the first solo exhibition in a UK public institution by Anj Smith.

Working primarily with painting, Smith’s practice reflects on the very possibilities and limitations of the medium itself. Her work excavates often overlooked art histories which she combines with her lived experiences to form the layers within her work. Exploring the very edges of representation, Smith’s intricately rendered paintings explore issues of identity, eroticism, mortality and fragility. Wildly feral landscapes, ambiguous figures, textiles, flora and fauna are intricately depicted.

Drawing upon sources as disparate as the works of Lucas Cranach, and the couture of Madam Grès, Smith weaves archaic traditions and contemporary signs together into a personal cosmology. Her paintings are rich in detail, colour and texture, collapsing strict definitions of portraiture, landscape and still-life whilst allowing elements of each to coexist.

About the artist
Anj Smith (born in Kent, England, in 1978. Lives and works in London) studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and Goldsmiths College in London. Smith has exhibited internationally in museums and galleries such as the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland; Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany; Fondazione Stelline, Milan, Italy; Museum Arnhem, Arnhem, Netherlands; The Bluecoat, Liverpool, UK; Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville TN; Hudson Valley Centre for Contemporary Art, Peekskill NY; Galerie Isa, Mumbai, India; La Maison Rouge, Paris, France, and Me Collector’s Room, Berlin, Germany. Smith’s work is also displayed in the collections of many leading international museums and collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; MOCA The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA; DRAF David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK and the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland.

Chiara Camoni, L’esercito di terracotta, 2012. Terracotta galestro Variable dimensions, detail. Courtesy SpazioA, Pistoia

Chiara Camoni
About this and that. The self and the other. Like everything
Featuring new and recent works, this new solo exhibition by Chiara Camoni includes a collaborative site-specific work created for MOSTYN.

Working primarily across drawing, sculpture and installation, Camoni creates spaces imbued with poetic sensibility. Her work is the result of a process which she calls “deviations” where materials are sourced through chance encounters and individuals or “various authors” close to her. Through this process, Camoni claims that “meaning is shared, it’s a small miracle. It’s her and their way of resisting—the fear, the passage of time, the news of the day.”

About the artist
Chiara Camoni (born in Piacenza, Italy, in 1974. Lives and works in Fabbiano, Italy) graduated in sculpture from Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and later worked at the Institute of Natural Sciences in Naples. Together with other artists, she founded the MAGra Contemporary Art Museum of Granara and the Vladivostok group. Camoni has exhibited widely in Italy with recent solo exhibitions at Arcade, London (2018) and MIMA, Middlesborough (2017).

Chiara Camoni’s exhibition is supported by Arcade, London & Brussels; SpazioA, Pistoia, Italy and Q International.

Nobuko Tsuchiya, Asteroid Absinthe, 2019. Courtesy Private Collection, Wiltshire.

Nobuko Tsuchiya
30 Ways to Go to the Moon
This is the first solo exhibition in Wales by Japanese artist Nobuko Tsuchiya.

Tsuchiya’s practice combines a wide range of materials, often including household objects, collected over time, which she assembles and casts to create amorphous, hybrid minimalist mechanical objects. Presented across the gallery floor, the works enter into dialogue with one another creating arresting and poetic installations.

Through a careful shift in scale from the minute to the monumental, Tsuchiya’s installations engage with the viewer’s relationship to space. Her sculptures are in constant transmutation; they are repositories of memory and experience, signifiers of past, present and future imaginaries, hovering and shifting through time and space.

About the artist
Nobuko Tsuchiya (born in Japan, in 1972. Lives and works in Japan) has exhibited widely, most notably in 50th Venice Biennale, Italy (2003); New Blood at the Saatchi Gallery London, 2004; Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century, New Museum, New York in 2007; Busan Biennale, South Korea in 2016 and Roppongi Crossing 2019: Connexions, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, earlier this year. Recently showing at Leeds Art Gallery as part of Yorkshire Sculpture International, Tsuchiya is also a finalist in the Nissan Award 2020. She is represented by SCAI the Bathhouse, Tokyo; Galerie Aline Vidal, Paris and Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London.

Nobuko Tsuchiya’s exhibition is supported by Anthony Reynolds, London.
The exhibition is also supported by the Japan Society and is an official event of the Japan Season of Culture in the UK.

The exhibition season is curated by MOSTYN Director, Alfredo Cramerotti.

See more info here.