Artworks
Robert Pratt
From Table Top to Tiger Print
25 November – 22 December 2011
Josh Lilley is pleased to announce From Table Top to Tiger Print, the debut exhibition at the gallery by British artist Robert Pratt.
Pratt's work evolves from his keen eye for the minute eccentricities of everyday life. He is fascinated with the details that go unnoticed by most — the dirty marks built up on the glass of a window, or the effervescent bubbles in a fizzy drink. By rendering them in a physical form, Pratt's installations draw our attention to these subtle moments of observation; ones we may have briefly noticed, but never properly considered.
Pratt purloins objects from their everyday environment and venerates their idiosyncrasies, allowing us to consider them anew. Distributed around the gallery space we see a collection of his momentary acknowledgments brought together into a conceptual bundle. Each observation Pratt hijacks from the world around him is transformed through his sculpture into an individual character that competes for attention across the space. Pratt's works are composed of found objects that are repurposed for the gallery so as to exaggerate their peculiar traits. His sculptures revere the everyday, overlooked object, transforming it into something alive, responsible and full of personality. Through Pratt's touch, such textures and associations become his own army of characters.
While other artists might incorporate found objects into their work, perhaps by adding to them or aestheticising them, Pratt is not afraid to let them stand for themselves. He adopts a Duchampian sense of irreverence to how sculpture should be composed — addressing banal subject matter while forlornly attempting to make beautiful, and bring attention to, the discarded. He also engages with how his works are affected by the inevitability of the viewer's gaze, whereby intended or anticipated modes of display are challenged and counteracted. Such a realization then reactivates his work and practice as a whole, where the approximate relationships between each work on the floor speak more about the concept of retrieval itself, rather than the possibilities a found object might acquire.
Robert Pratt (b. 1984, Frimley, UK) lives and works in London. Pratt graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2009. Previous solo exhibitions include Glazing, Glazing, Glazed, The Cello Factory, London, 2011; Resistance is an Afterthought, Royal British Society of Sculptors, London, 2010; and Bendy Straws and Beached Whales, ANDOR Gallery, London, 2010. Selected group shows include Restrike, Poppy Sebire Gallery, London, 2011; Friendship of the Peoples, Simon Oldfield Gallery, London, 2011; and Extension, Vilma Gold, London 2011.