Nick Laessing’s work revisits the utopian aspirations of scientific rebels, autodidacts and amateur experimenters.
For LIGHT | READING, Laessing will explore the ‘free-energy’ movement, producing a new body of work based around experiments with the machine Prototype II (after US patent 6545444 B2 by John Bedini).
The free energy movement follows claims and inventions made primarily by the scientist Nikola Tesla at the beginning of 20th century. He thought it possible to harvest free or radiant energy from the atmosphere or aether. Since then a number of inventors have worked on his theories and more recently the isolated work of a few individuals has found a wide following through the internet.
Laessing’s reconstruction of a radiant energiser first built by USA inventor John Bedini will attempt to be the source of power for lighting and sound equipment used to present found radio interviews and research conducted by the artist during his recent PERMACULTURES residency at SPACE. The main gallery will thus become a framework for entering the tacit world of these experimenters.
Nick Laessing was born in London. Following BA studies at Kingston University he gained a PGD from the Royal Academy of Art in 1999. Recent solo exhibitions include “Nick Laessing” Arcade, London (2009), “Nick Laessing”, Arquebuse, Geneva (2007), “Nick Laessing”, Mary Mary, Glasgow.
Characteristically condensing around the visual dimension of language, Adam Thomas’ practice suggests new and intuitive models for rendering the art/language binary.
The idea of ‘making’ language – translating it into physical forms coterminous with the plastic arts – is a central theme throughout colourless green ideas sleep furiously. Handled by Thomas, language becomes an object: a thing in the world that demands not only linguistic, but also phenomenological, aesthetical, historical, art canonical, mythical and personal consideration.
Adam Thomas was born in Swansea in 1984. He gained his BA Fine Art from Kingston University, London, in 2006. Recent exhibitions include Young Adam Thomas, Associates, London (2007), All Cut Up (group), Roebling Hall, New York (2008), Paper Show (group), David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen (2009) and The Little Shop on Hoxton Street (group), Limoncello, London, (2009).
colourless green ideas sleep furiously is the third NEU! exhibition at SPACE. Previous exhibitions were; PROH-SOH’ PA-PEER by Richard John Jones (September 2009) and What I Believe (a Polemical Collection) by Ruth Beale (November 2009). NEU! is an ongoing cycle of solo exhibitions by emerging artists at SPACE.
Installed by Guestroom in SPACE’s own independent publication library, The Librarians is a series of eight video portraits concerned with personal libraries and collections.
Each film looks at one person’s selection processes and by extension the design of their environment in relation to their wider practice and ideas. Within the series we encounter both intentional collections and more organic yet highly specific selections within an ordinary bookshelf. As a sequence, the portraits become part of a complex constellation as relationships and connections develop between individuals and their ideas.
The Librarians are Tom McCarthy, Michael Leslie, Lorenza Boisi, Shaun Pubis, Pablo Bronstein, Rebecca Bligh, Isabel Waidner and Adam Sutherland.
Guestroom is a collaborative project by artists Maria Benjamin (born Broxburn, 1972, lives in London) and Ruth Höflich (born Munich, 1976, lives in London).
Ben Woodeson creates works that aim to tease and unsettle the viewer and the exhibiting institution.
Since the start of 2009 Woodeson has been making and exhibiting the Health & Safety Violation Series of deliberately dangerous sculptures. To date, these have included 33,000 ball bearings on the floor, automatic trip wires, suffocation devices, electric fences, spinning metal weights, twisting ropes and steel garrotting cables.
His work for the Foyer Space will comprise of a new site-specific intervention and a video documenting a cycle of recently developed works.
Ben Woodeson studied at Chelsea College of Art and Design and Glasgow School of Art. He has exhibited throughout the UK, Europe and the USA. He has a studio in SPACE’s Triangle building in East London.
The Foyer Space platform showcases the work of a SPACE studio artist in conjunction with the main exhibition cycles.
Forthcoming Exhibitions
19th March - 17th April 2010
19th March - 17th April 2010 
19th March - 17th April 2010
