In curating the Confluences exhibition, Rebecca Scott has deliberately sidestepped the standard artworld trope of the artist as exceptional, but inevitably isolated, individual. Although much of the show’s focus is upon Mark Woods (her co-director at Cross Lane Projects), the exhibition also presents sixteen other, mostly contemporary, artists who she recognises as having had a substantial influence upon Woods, though not always in the most obvious of ways.
Sometimes it is a matter of attitude, parallel experiences, friendship or temporary commonality – simply sharing a studio space for a limited time would exemplify the latter; or the influence may be overt and direct in terms of ideas and physical production of work. In this case, the viewer may easily recognise certain technical, material or aesthetic parallels, if and when Woods’ work partly approximates that of another artist. A vivid example would be the visual and physical parallels between Woods’ complex, sexually-suggestive constructions and Atty Bax’s totemic, “gynaecological” assemblages made from a combination of precious materials and carefully sewn soft cloths, while Woods is on record as stating how he was powerfully affected by Cathy de Monchaux’s 1997 exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, though her work in the present display is from 2025. In the press release, Scott considers the role of the artist as a “tributary”, observing that, “as time flows on by, we pass through certain people’s lives at certain times, we have conversations that formulate thinking, we see exhibitions, and meet artists that change and influence us.” In an Artworld all too often centred around a belief in the individual as exceptional artist, “maker” or “voice”, this open acknowledgement is a welcome reconfiguration of received ideas about how the artist is supposed to think, appear or behave.
Woods’ extensive contribution to Confluences is a large selection of works from his most recent show at the gallery, Formula + Fetish, which directly preceded Confluences. In other words, Scott has in effect removed perhaps half of the previous exhibition, replacing it with works by sixteen other artists, which may be a clever way of extending the earlier display. Yet, it carries the risk afforded by juxtaposition or comparison: do Woods’ strikingly complex constructions benefit from this realignment or come across as derivative in relation to the other pieces on show? Just who has influenced whom, and how? For those visitors who saw both exhibitions, there is surely a sense of déjà vu. Yet, as Psychoanalysis and other theoretical models have made clear, repetition is itself a meaningful, potentially disturbing act. There is also something comical about taking a substantial chunk of Formula + Fetish and rereading it as a kind of Duchampian readymade; this curatorial slight-of-hand also alludes, consciously or otherwise, to the complicated figure of the synecdoche, in which something substantial is recalled through the presentation of a mere fragment of the whole – when, for example, a crown is deployed to allude to the full complexity that is the individual person and extensive institutional construct of the king.
The physical layout of the exhibition involves four distinct areas: an entrance space with pieces by several artists and including a fantastic circular display device containing numerous photo-works by Woods, a corridor lined with Woods’ small suitcase assemblages, a “white cube” display room, and what is meant to suggest a sort of storage zone or dead end. Two or three works each by the sixteen remaining participants are scattered throughout the whole space. Right at the back, as though piled up at the last minute, is a quite precisely arranged array of out-of-date electrical devices, assembled by Lee Holden and still buzzing and bleeping as if to warn us of our imminent demise. It’s unclear as to what exactly the shelves adjacent to this collection hold. However, I spotted a looped video by Jim Whiting and, lying flat on the floor, a drowsy, heavily scuffed sleeping bag by Gavin Turk, cast in bronze and thereby not at all the once-functional device it at first sight seemed to be. Stella Whalley’s large mixed-media figure drawing acts as a precursor to the entire show in that it was made by directly drawing from aspects of Woods’ work, while Michael Petry’s camouflage-related paintings refuse to allow the viewer deeper access to whatever is hidden therein – another clear parallel with Woods’ dialectic of interior and exterior forms. The tight, thin lines of Cedric Christie’s wall-mounted reliefs, concocted, not without humour, from snooker balls and curved metal rods, add a welcome lightness of touch to a presentation in which a considerable number of the pieces displayed are physically layered, enclosed like a Christian tabernacle or sweetly seductive trap.
Confluences embodies an admirably honest aesthetic of “communal”, dialogical exchanges between a specific retinue of artists. Although located right at the centre of the network, Woods’ work is, as this exhibition makes clear, a single, if substantial element within an intriguing force field of artists and effects.
Peter Suchin is an artist, critic and curator.
Confluences, curated by Rebecca Scott, Cross Lane Projects, Kendal, 19 July–13 September, 2025
Artists (in the order listed on the press release):
Mark Woods, Jim Whiting, Stella Whalley, Gavin Turk, Atty Bax, Rebecca Scott, Lawson Oyekan, Michael Petry, Julia Maddison, Lee Holden, Cathy de Monchaux, Helen Chadwick, Cedric Christie, Louise Bourgeois, Jim Bond, Sooz Belnavis, Vanya Balogh
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