Question Centre presents LUCY KUMARA MOORE AND JO SPENCE
22nd September – 5th October 2022
Fuel Tank
8-12 Creekside
London
SE8 3DX
Elizabeth Xi Bauer presents the seventh edition of Question Centre in which works by Lucy Kumara Moore will be exhibited in dialogue with works by Jo Spence.
Question Centre is a nomadic platform of exhibitions that draws on generational bonds among artists, making use of both conventional and unconventional art spaces. It presents fresh works by a contemporary artist alongside a piece by a practitioner from a previous generation (active or historic), conceived the year the younger one was born.
Photograph: Ten Chiang. Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery, London
Such a piece may be an artwork or any other item or event that offers an insight into the year of birth of the invited artist. This ‘obstruction’ aims to both contextualise a present day practice within a historical perspective and play with the general obsession of the ‘forever young’ – omnipresent in the artistic environment – thus raising questions concerning generation and context. The project is developed by Maria do Carmo M. P. de Pontes.
Lucy Kumara Moore (b. London 1981) is an artist, writer and book dealer. She studied painting at Chelsea College of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art, where she was awarded the inaugural Outset Studio Award. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including at Jerwood Space and 72 Lyndhurst Way in London, PICA in Perth, Australia and ALASKA in Sydney. Moore’s exhibition at Elizabeth Xi Bauer marks a return to painting after a hiatus of 9 years, during which her activities have centred around her bookshop, Claire de Rouen.
Remodelling Photo History: Revisualization, 1981-82
Collaboration with Terry Dennett
Black and white photograph
35.5 x 28 cm
Jo Spence (1934, London, UK – 1992, London, UK) was a photographer whose work examined issues of class, power and gender, death and dying. Spence began her career as a commercial photographer, specialising in family portraits and wedding photos. She pushed the medium beyond this narrow subject matter to explore its political function, challenging the social and structural barriers working against female artists of the time.
Out of this emerged her collaborations with the Hackney Flashers, a collective of female documentary photographers. Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1982, Spence later developed the technique of ‘photo therapy,’ using photography as a therapeutic tool to document her battle with the disease.
Spence’s work is in the permanent collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; MOMA | Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA; Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA, USA; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, UK; Tate Collection, London, UK; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK and Wellcome Trust, London, UK. Her work has been exhibited in group and solo shows internationally including in Brazil, USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, Ireland, Poland, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain and Austria.
©2022 Elizabeth Xi Bauer, Lucy Kumara Moore, Jo Spence, Terry Dennett, Ten Chiang