1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2007 | 2008
Please select a year to view archives


Thank you, you have selected the RBS Exhibitions and Events archive for 2003.

To receive regular information and updates about the activities
of the RBS, please contact:
membership: 020 7373 5554
email: info@rbs.org.uk

Set ini Motion, Nik Ramage & Robert Currie

5-28 February

The RBS gallery presented new works by Nik Ramage and Robert Currie. Magical whirring, clanking and squealing, reminiscent of toys shops and strange hobbyist preoccupation’s, animated the awkward spaces of the19th century gallery with home made, hand built machines incorporating everyday objects such as plastic bags and two pence pieces.

Ramage’s works have been called machines ‘on the verge of giving up’ and included; chair legs on springs, water flowing through tubes and funnels, a vehicle bumping in between two walls, a tricycle you can ride and inflated carrier bags. His work points to the absurd and uncanny nature of objects that inhabit and sometimes shape our lives.

Currie used mathematical precision to create controlled chaos, including; a motor system unraveling a woollen scarf, an audio tape spilling its contents to be reassembled, polystyrene balls contained by air flow and a machine to pop bubble wrap. Using the fragility of redundant domestic technology and the promises it used to hold, these works observe the cyclical functions of time whilst in a constant state of motion, prompting questions about the continued relationship of technology to everyday life.

back to top

Vial, Anne Butler & Beverly Carpenter

5 March - 4 April

The RBS Gallery presented new works by Anne Butler and Beverly Carpenter. Their collaborative project, engaging art and technology, pointed to the heart and contradictions within scientific endeavour ; the hope and anxiety it provokes when applied to our lives, the phenomena of inside and outside of us, the power of the gleaming microscope, and a sanitary vacuum in which to examine properties, chemistry and mortality. Situated within the 19th century salon gallery of the RBS, their work had a historical resonance, pointing to a culture of art, science and commerce, a marriage made in industrialization.

back to top

there, there David Cheeseman & John Wigley

9 April - 1May

In this new body of work by Cheeseman and Wigley their title, ‘there there’, belied the inherent anxiety of reassurance and the tension and vulnerability of a mothers balming repetition. Their sculptures rework and replicate ordinary objects to make them extraordinary, even fetishistic, including materials of mother of pearl, black perspex, shining cast iron, feather and felt. In the manner of classic fetishism, this work engages with a desire that is always already, never to be satisfied but condemned to the eternal repetition of trying.

back to top

Installations, Howard Silverman

14 May - 6 June

In May, the RBS presented a new body of work by Howard Silverman. Originating from New York and San Francisco he has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including Spacex Gallery, John Moores and a residency and exhibition at Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice 2002.

Configurations that start with pathways lead in chains and rhythms, into three dimensional objects and installations, encompassing entire rooms. Building up from the floor they resemble rippled water or a dense vibrating swarm of insects. As they increase in height and depth their tension uncoils like the spring of a coil to emerge into architectural structures of towers and caves. Pathways and tunnels cut through the rooms filled with corrugated card continually trying to find a way around and through it, with dead ends and short cuts. In this manner, the work articulates a continual reinvention of space and a desire to find our place within it.

back to top

Annual Exhibition 2003

11 June - 4 July 2003

John Atkin, John Fowler, Deirdre Hubbard, Joseph Ingleby, Al Johnson, Lydia Karpinska, Linda Kirkbride, Rosie Leventon, Illur Malus Islandus, Teresa Mills, Nicolas Moreton, Derek Morris, Terry New, Simon Raines, Nik Ramage, Mark Richards, Gill Russell, Andre Wallace, Peter Weaver, Robert Worley.

The RBS Gallery presented its’ annual members exhibition of sculptors, selected this year by Martin Holman, a freelance writer and arts consultant, previously head of development at Camden Art Centre and the Whitechapel Art Gallery. This years’ exhibition brought together a self conscious relationship of figuration and installation resulting an alignment of the uncanny and kitsch with traditional works recontexturalized.


back to top

One Eye Open, Douglas Burton ARBS

RBS Bronzecasting award
9 July - 1 August

Douglas Burton’s work historically engages with the terrain of Victorian imperialism. In this exhibition he examined the traces that connect this legacy to contemporary corporate activity. This work was developed while working outside Heathrow on a brown site with ISO shipping containers. These objects have picked up and developed a history along their journey, in the form of a membrane embedded with symbols, flags, logos and numbers.

The shipping containers exist between two worlds and only the surface, with scraps of information and stains, makes connections in a series of puzzles evoking the exotic but determined by serving commerce. This work also draws on an experience of a journey taken on the Trans Siberian Express through Russia and China, a Victorian trade route, and these objects incorporate a sense of nostalgia and personal suspension in a landscape of moving commercial, military and architectural space.

This exhibition was a result of the annual RBS Bronze casting Award and works with surfaces, structure and pattern in materials of bronze, wood, wax and video animation. Douglas Burton graduated from The Royal Academy in 2002.

back to top

Bursary Exhibition 2003

6 - 29 August 2003

Fiona Carabine, Emma Churchill, Flora Gare, David Kefford, Jeffrey Ty Lee, Hywel Livingstone, Alison Marchant, Miranda Matthews, David Stewart, Michael Visocchi.

The RBS annually awards ten bursaries to early career sculptors. This year’s selection is brought together showing a wide range of materials and practice, with many artists making new work for the exhibition. We are also proud, this year to present the Roy Noakes Award to one of the exhibitors, judged for their contribution to contemporary sculptural practice, at the private view of the Bursary exhibition.

back to top

Light, VIsion & Transformation,

Helaine Blumenfeld, Peter Newsome, Johannes von Stumm

3 September - 11 October 2003

Of all the physical arts, perhaps sculpture enjoys the closest relationship with light as is so clearly demonstrated in an exciting collaboration of three very distinguished artists who have chose to celebrate this concept with the exhibition, 'Light, Vision and Transformation'.

Helaine Blumenfeld, Peter Newsome and Johannes von Stumm have gathered together a series of works that use metal, stone, glass and paper. These fascinating pieces all appreciate that light illuminates and reveal a work of art. They do not only just reflect and refract light, but the translucent properties of many of the pieces in this exhibition actually allow light to enter the heart of the work and so let the light itself become part of the art.

Back to Top