Amie Siegel

For her first solo show in London, New York-based artist Amie Siegel presents recent works exploring the mechanisms through which objects and materials become imbued with value.

Projected on an impressive scale in the main gallery, Quarry, 2015 traces the transition of marble from its excavation at the deepest underground quarry in the world, to its almost inevitable use in the interiors of modern luxury apartments in Manhattan skyscrapers. Beautiful, formally rigorous and underpinned by a dramatic orchestral soundtrack, Quarry draws us into a mesmerising exposé of the multi-layered relationships between art, labour and value.

Fetish, 2016 shown in the first floor galleries, further reveals the complexity of these relationships by focusing on Sigmund Freud’s personal collection of archaeological statues and artefacts. Filmed at the Freud Museum in north London, it portrays the nighttime cleaning of the psychoanalyst's collection, suggesting echoes between the intimate, unveiling practices of object care and the ritualistic disclosures of analysis which are normally hidden from view.

Amie Siegel (b. 1974, Chicago, USA) works variously between film, video, photography, performance and installation. Known for her layered, meticulously constructed works that trace and perform the undercurrents of systems of value, cultural ownership and image-making, the artist’s recent solo exhibitions include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the MAK, Vienna. Siegel has participated in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Hayward Gallery, London; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; MoMA PS1; MAXXI Museum, Rome; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Her work is in public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Her films have screened at the Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and New York Film Festivals, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner-Künstlerprogramm and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulton Fellow at The Film Study Center at Harvard University, a recipient of the ICA Boston's Foster Prize, Sundance Institute and Creative Capital Awards.