KLOMPCHING GALLERY is delighted to present a solo exhibition of new work by Odette England. This will be the artist’s second solo show at the gallery, and brings together a selection of artworks from three recently completed and ongoing projects.
Home is the center-weight of England’s artistic practice, with memory and forgetting being the counterbalances. Her photographs are fragile, contemplative and temporal spaces. The Outskirts is a re-presentation of the artist’s family album; original vintage snapshots enlarged and obscured by the original photo album pages from which they were excavated. The meaning of the photographs are thus transformed, with the focus being on the peripheral and the edge.
Caption info: Punched #2, 2018–2019, from the Punched series. Credit: © Odette England/Courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York
Likewise, with Punched, the viewer is left to fill in the blanks. With this work, England punches out the main subjects using a hole puncher—an act both playful and provocative. For the artist, this transitions the subject to one of process, and imposes a different kind of viewing.
“The circular shape of the punches become little clouds of thought, or speech bubbles in space. Black holes where information or knowledge continues to leak out. These spaces invite the imagination to fill them back up again.” —Odette England
The materiality of the photograph, the process of photographing and making, continues as key concept in theExposed series. England collects double dark slides—the essential tool for large-format film photography—and records the interiors, with their silver nitrate stains, and marks of constant use. Each one is unique, like a photograph, and each act as evidence of the photographic process. In photographing these stains, scratches, and scars of photographic labor, England brings to light surfaces that show how photography itself makes images.
“This is the story of the life of a camera and the life of a photographer who has taken countless pictures, who has been through this repetitive process of recording things that we don’t know anything about. All we see in the plates is the residue, and that’s the part I’m interested in, the ‘mucky’ residue that’s left behind.” —Odette England
England’s background as a painter, informs her assertion of photography’s materiality, with the photographic print often being the starting point, not the end point of her practice. The physical photograph intrigues the artist, especially for its connection to personal and collective memory.
Caption info: Punched #31, 2018–2019, from the Punched series. Credit: © Odette England/Courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York
About Odette England
Odette England (b. 1975) is an Australian/British artist, whose artwork has been exhibited across the US and internationally. Awards and accolades include winning the 2012 CENTER Project Launch Award, shortlisted for the 2015 Australian Photo Book of the Year, Finalist for the 2015 Cliftons Art Prize, and shortlisted for the prestigious 2016 Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award. Collections holding her work include the George Eastman Museum, New Mexico Museum of Art, MoCP, and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Odette England lives and works in Rhode Island.
Caption info: Punched #40, 2018–2019, from the Punched series. Credit: © Odette England/Courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York
About Klompching Gallery
Klompching Gallery was established in Dumbo, Brooklyn in September 2007. Owned and operated by Debra Klomp Chingand Darren Ching, the gallery quickly established itself as a gallery with an extraordinary roster of artists from which to purchase some of the best examples of contemporary photography—with exhibition reviews in publications such asThe New Yorker, Art Review, Modern Painters, New York magazine and The Wall Street Journal, as well as numerous notable cultural websites. Since its inception, the gallery has earned a solid reputation for providing informed guidance on the acquisition of contemporary fine art photography.
Caption info: Punched #52, 2018–2019, from the Punched series. Credit: © Odette England/Courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York
KLOMPCHING GALLERY
March 21–May 11, 2019
89 WATER STREET BROOKLYN, NY 11201
Caption info: Punched #76, 2018–2019, from the Punched series. Credit: © Odette England/Courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York
Caption info: Plate #36, 2017–2018, from the Exposed series.
Credit: © Odette England/Courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York
Caption info: Plate #42, 2017–2018, from the Exposed series.
Credit: © Odette England/Courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York
Caption info: Plate #54, 2017–2018, from the Exposed series.
Credit: © Odette England/Courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York
Caption info: Plate #60, 2017–2018, from the Exposed series.
Credit: © Odette England/Courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York