JODIE CAREY | 'RECENT WORKS'

Download Release

September 4th - October 11th, 2008

Daneyal Mahmood Gallery is please to present Jodie Cary’s first solo exhibition in NY premiering her most recent work. This exhibition explores the frequent disparity between private and public grief and the acts we undertake in the rituals of mourning. It continues the themes of ceremony artifice and mortality that thread consistently throughout Carey's practice.

Reproduction furniture such as dining room tables, tv cabinets and the very English cake stand are heavily adorned with feathers and flowers made of blood soaked news and wax papers dripping with candle wax to create still-lives with strong ritualistic and ecclesial overtones. The out-of-fashion furniture speaks of a past generation, of Sunday best and "keeping up appearances". It speaks both of domestic routine and the rituals of hospitality. The carefully crafted abundant funereal blooms present a magnificent facade, their own fragility and elegance evoking a desolate transitory beauty that is quietly sinister. The silence of the soft feathers adorning both the walls and the furniture appear luxurious at first glance, but on closer inspection still bear the stains of the slaughtered birds.

Both sculptures and wall hangings represent the commemorations of death through the traditions we uphold and the public gestures we make. In a sense, Carey's works are private monuments, unusually filled with sincere reverence and emotion that can often be lacking in the public monuments set in stone. They are filled with the piercing dramas of everyday life, of everyday death, of everyday “Englishness” and stand as still lives from past lives tainted by the inevitability of tragedy, time and decay.

October / November 2008 Jodie Carey, By Carla Yarish, Art World, Issue 7

September 2008 Art Review

October 2007 Student Shows - ArtWorld Magazine

October 2007 Hearts and Bones - Financieel Dagblad

September 2007 Kunst van spekvet, nagellak en bloed - Parool

June 2007 Degrees of Freedom - Charlotte Edwards, World of Interiors

May 2007 The Saatchi Show - Bronwyn Cosgrave, Evening Standard Magazine

October 2005 Pick of the Fairs - Sarah Kent, TimeOut

September 2005 Future masters earn their stripes - Virginia Blackburn, The Times

June 2005 Brit Art - here's Grit Art - Hester Westley, the Times

About Jodie Carey:

UK artist Jodie Carey creates dark, sweet sculptures that, she says, "offer beauty but at the same time confront us with the ugliness of life". Jodie mines the trappings of everyday life in Britain for the provocative yet humble materials that give life to her sculptures. Blood, lard, newspaper, was, dustballs, bones and feathers have all found place in her thoughtful & meticulous arrangements which mimic, on grand scale, rituals carried out around death - a subject at least in part provoked by family loss. Carey's latest work explores rituals undertaken during the process of mourning, public displays of death, how we participate in rituals & how they don't reflect our inner feelings.

Solo Exhibitions

2009 Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, UK

2008 Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, New York, NY

2008 Still, Life, Alexia Goethe Gallery, London

2007 Galerie Gabriel Rolt, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Group Exhibitions

2008 The power of paper, Saatchi Gallery, London

2008 Make Believe, Concrete & Glass Festival, London

2007 Anticipation, David Roberts Gallery

2007 Summer Exhibition, Royal College of Art

2007 Deep Inspiration, Jerwood Gallery, London

2006 New Works, Blyth Gallery, London

2006 Summer Show, Royal College of Art, London

2006 Interim Show, Royal College of Art, London

2005 Seventeen Presents…Seventeen, London

2005 London in Zurich, Hauser and Wirth, Zurich

Collections

Charles Saatchi, David Roberts, Kay Saatchi, Hauser and Wirth, Leif Djurhuus