Tuesday’s opening night of the Edgar Wind Society’s first ever exhibition ‘The Material’, at Freud, was intensely cool. The president of the society, Tori McKenna, selected five artists from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art to exhibit, including Sonia Bernaciak, Mateo Revillo Imbernon (and his friend Juluan Mignot from Paris), Irina Iordache, Louisa Siem and Lili Pickett-Palmer, who were all present and ready to offer an insight into their inspired works.
As I walked up the steps to the Greek revival church, with heavy beats pounding from inside, I espied the beautiful centrepiece created by Sonia Bernaciak. The spidery hand-knitted web was a part of her collection ‘On the Revolutions of Things’. The close-geometric pattern reflects Sonia’s focus on her “naïve” approach to science. The delicate structure draws in one’s gaze, but its sheer size also makes you reflect on her other works around the web. Its construction spanned across a quarter of the exhibition space, enveloping only Sonia’s own work and creating an unsettling stasis overhead, as though the viewer’s presence ‘inside’ the web was both trapping and comforting – the late Louise Bourgeois’s arachnoid sculpture ‘Maman’ came to mind.
A particular highlight of the evening was ‘Circus’, the presentation by Mateo Revillo Imbernon and Juluan Pierre Mignot. The harrowing spectacle was played out perfectly in Freud’s decaying apse, reflecting their desire to show the coldness of the contemporary world. The piece, described by Mateo less as a ‘performance’ and more as a representation of his sculpture through music and movement, was consciously interdisciplinary; Mateo’s visual performance was powerfully complemented by the dark electronic music which accompanied it.
Irina Iordache’s video installation ‘Untitled One’ was movingly potent. The delicate and aesthetic beginning of the video provides the link to the material by presented commonly accepted images of beauty, using a soft focus on her lips, yellow carnations and an enchanting view from a train window. But this beauty is juxtaposed with a stark revelation which subverts commonly accepted morality, leaving the viewer feeling rather conflicted.
Louisa Siem’s works, constructed using chocolate and mirrors elicited many strong responses, and were certainly a talking point. The layout of the mirrors was complemented by Sonia’s centrepiece, creating a striking triangular structure on the floor, highlighting an underlying connection between the various works and expanding the room both horizontally and vertically.
Massive congratulations go to Tori McKenna, president of the Edgar Wind Society, for curat- ing the exhibition and hosting with such excellent style. Thanks must also be said to the treas- ure, Evie Hicklin and the Secretary, Joshua Hill, It was a huge success and drew large numbers of people, both from the art world and beyond.
