Soft Opening

Soft Opening is pleased to present new works from Tenant of Culture, Gina Fischli and Nevine Mahmoud.

By disassembling and rebuilding manufactured garments, Tenant of Culture examines where ideological, political, or cultural perspectives materialise in the various stages of the production and marketing of apparel. Using deconstruction as a method to gain insight into industrial processes, Tenant of Culture seeks materials sourced from various stages of the garment production cycle that relate to recent trends in fashion and their socio-political histories.

Gina Fischli explores aspiration, desire and the allure of the consumable object. In this ongoing series of painted glitter works, the artist presents still-lives representative of typical scenes from the design-conscious, middle-class home. Fischli reimagines objects that invoke the presence of an individual implied by their absence, to offer a collection of clues built from clichés of taste that, pieced together, engender a mood emblematic of her generation’s aspirational habitats.

Working with carved marble and hand-blown glass, Nevine Mahmoud reinvigorates traditional, once male-dominated processes, interlacing the embedded history and associations of ancient materials with an exploration of archetypal feminine forms and symbols. In these small-scale studies, stone eggs rest on material or props. Denoting potential, birth or the unknown, these nuclei emanate a powerful formal and symbolic intensity. Like offerings from different gestures, moods or personalities - one domestic and kitsch, another fragile and precious and the last tactile and literal - each piece operates as a sketch for future ideas or installations of Mahmoud's work in space.

For more information about each artist please see the gallery website or contact us directly.