LAUNCHING 5 NOVEMBER
Carpet City, where Maria Militsi both lives and works, is a vast flooring warehouse in Tottenham, north London. Attracted to the low rental cost and relative anonymity of its live-work space, Militsi has made Carpet City her refuge.
#_Carpet City_By_Appointment_Only is a quasi-retrospective: a chance for Militsi to restage, and reflect on her work to date, within the sanctuary of her own space. Works both old and new, highly finished, and ongoing are interspersed among Militsi’s own belongings, creating a dialogic space that is at once curated and lived in, spectacular and commonplace, purposive and incidental.
—words by Kimberley Chandler
Skipper (2016)
Blue Boy (2008)
Self-portraits 2 (2011-2015)
Photo by James Champion
13 AUGUST TO 30 SEPTEMBER
Survey is an exhibition in digital space that brings together selected works by Alida Kuzemczak-Sayer from 2009 to the present. Paper, light, accumulations of cut or torn page-like layers and deconstructed glyphic marks reverberate throughout, as archive works are placed alongside others to explore their shared rhythms out of time.
A new piece made during the first lockdown in 2020, Signature with Recollected Marks, assimilates remembered drawings from a pre-pandemic journey through Sicily, markings in natural stone and the Italian tradition of illusory paint effects that emulate them, with the visual language of Kuzemczak-Sayer's much earlier letterform works. This piece sparked an interest for the artist in reflecting on the relationships between different works: a gesture of retrieval and connection during a period of distance and separation.
Signature with Recollected Marks (2020)
53 x 25 x 3 cm
Signture III (2016) 60 x 20 x 4 cm public collection
Signature VI (2016)
53 x 22 x 2.5 cm
A Wet Map installation view on a salt-soaked wall in Venice (2016) h. 91 cm
Wet Map Extract III (2017)
62 x 12 x 5 cm
Untitled work from the Lucent series (2018) h. 28 cm
New Medusa I (2017) h. 150 cm
Foreground: Here we are I detail (2009) Background: CCCC II detail (2019)
There is no beginning detail (2010)
A Torn Condition detail (2013)
All moments detail (2009)
In Course II (2019/2021)
7 x 41 x 28 cm
Spine VII (2015)
21.5 x 7 x 20 cm
Foreground: Signature III (2016) 38 x 31 x 4 cm public collection Background: The Balcony Hotel II detail (2017)
There is no beginning from There is no why installation view at Marsden Woo Project Space (2010)
Wet Map Extract installation view (2017)
Lucent Property installation view (2019)
Foreground: The Balcony Hotel I installation view at Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk (2017) private collection Background: Lucent Property IV detail (2019)
CCCC II (2019)
CCCC II viewed in darkness (2019)
The Balcony Hotel II installation view at Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk (2017)
The Balcony Hotel II viewed in darkness (2017)
The Balcony Hotel III (2017) private collection
The Balcony Hotel III detail, viewed in direct light (2017) private collection
Alida Kuzemczak-Sayer’s practice explores a longstanding interest in systems of communication, the encoding of experience and ways of apprehending the intangible. Through a process-driven approach to making and in response to periods of immersive research, she considers the duality of reading and writing and how the residue of these actions may accumulate or shift through material forms. Her sculptural works often also address contemporary relationships to heritage, the linguistic qualities of rhythmic glyphic mark-making and the transformative, yet indexical, nature of the copy.
Kuzemczak-Sayer trained at The Royal College of Art (MA Sculpture 2014) and at Glasgow School of Art (BA Hons Visual Communication 2009). She has undertaken residencies in Seoul, Venice, Norfolk and at Firstsite Colchester and Scottish Sculpture Workshop, and commissions for Norwich Cathedral, The National Trust and University of East Anglia/Hungate Norwich. Examples of her work are held in The Anthony Shaw Collection at York Art Gallery, Letterform Archive San Francisco and private collections internationally.
Photography by Philip Sayer
For more information or details about any of the featured artworks please contact Tatjana Marsden or Siobhan Feeney: info@marsdenwoo.com