Summer Breeze: An Ensemble of Gallery Artists

Summer Breeze is a group exhibition that presents ethereal artworks by a selection of Frith Street Gallery artists. Whether by exploring complex notions of identity by foregrounding the multifaceted nature of the self, delving into the realms of domestic or natural worlds, or returning to the archive, these works remind us of the physically and temporally precarious nature of all things. Spanning both gallery locations, this ensemble of photography, drawing, painting, moving image and sculpture allows viewers to drift into unfolding discovery.

At Soho Square, narrative dissolves into the threshold of memory with a selection that reveals as much as it conceals. Shot on a mountain in Secciano, Italy, Mountain Wind (2002) by Jaki Irvine portrays wind moving through trees, causing the mountain to appear to breathe. In the accompanying soundtrack, the Italian diva Mina is heard singing as she watches her lover sleeping. Here, two seemingly disparate elements contribute to an encompassing melancholic longing. In the second room, Anna Barriball and Tacita Dean use source materials to reimagine the past in an ever-unfolding present. For Barriball, found 35mm slides are photographed and re-projected as burnt out artefacts, becoming objects that are at once tangible and fleeting. In Dean’s Trying to Find the Spiral Jetty (1998), the artist is on a search for Robert Smithson’s iconic earthwork, but the blending of fact and fiction ensures that the work, as well as the journey itself, is steeped in myth. Downstairs, photographs by John Riddy propose a release from gravity. In creating images of the sky, the otherwise fixed environment of a constructed landscape gives way to an endless vista extending overhead. Only when the light, colour, atmosphere and formation appear to fall into place can the final work emerge and swell.