Adam and Eve it

Saturday 1 October to Friday 25 November 2005 Monday to Saturday 11am to 5pm

Artists’ Talk led by Sally O’Reilly in conversation with Maier and Whall Thursday 6 October 2005. Drinks from 6.30 Talk begins at 7pm

A specially commissioned essay by Sally O’Reilly is downloadable here.

Artists’ Multiple: a limited edition double-sided artists’ multiple is available for sale at £15 throughout the exhibition. Eve’s Custom House is a 2 colour hand screen printed image by Danica Maier and stills from Ladybirds is a full colour lithograph by Miranda Whall.

Adam and Eve it unites the natural bedfellows of sex, the feminine and..…lace. Through lace installations and lace inspired drawings, Maier and Whall exploit the ‘prosiness’ of lace and the repetition of pattern to disguise explicit and sometimes deeply personal content. In both cases the content only begins to reveal itself to the viewer as they experience a direct relationship with the work.

Adam and Eve it is particularly timely given the increasing rise of lad and ladette culture in contemporary Britain; the plethora of lad mags sporting a host of naked female beauties, the surge of binge drinking amongst young women; the conservative backlash against the perceived loss of traditional morals and values, and feminist angst at the continued lack of progress for women’s rights.

Through a series of drawings inspired by traditional Flemish lace pieces, Whall questions and explores her identity by juxtaposing auto erotic self portraits with any living or inanimate thing that exists outside of herself; she straddles rats, swings off the fork of a Turbo Panasonic, flies on the back of bats, sits astride churches etc in a futile attempt to coexist. Within the potentially infinite wilderness of pattern and the prosiness of lace she plays with her inappropriate and illicit fantasies. What seems innocent from a distance is on close inspection a subversion of the traditional female craft.

Maier’s work looks at her family upbringing in Delaware, on the America’s East coast, and the conservative home she was raised in. Her work looks like it could be the product of a pastime or hobby, a crocheted doily for example, but conceals imagery of a highly sexual nature that looks at our ideals of womanhood – ie ‘the good girl / housewife’ or the sexualized being. Both artists disguise their imagery, at least at first glance, by using the aesthetics of crafts. A use of lace runs through both artists' work – Whall in the form of tiny, obsessive drawings mimicking 18th and 19th Century European lace designs, while Maier uses lace itself, sometimes even pieces given to her by her family.

For the exhibition Maier has produced all white installation, using a variety of lace, including her grandmother’s, pinned to the wall to form large scale repeat drawings. Both artists' work initially appears to purely decorative and it is only when the viewer moves away from the work, in Maier’s case, or when the viewer moves in much closer, as with Whall’s images, that the content becomes apparent. ‘Adam & Eve It’ is part of London Printworks Trust’s ‘Homespun’ programme, funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. Homespun's central aim is to enable emerging artists to make and exhibit new bodies of work by offering the opportunity to experiment with the printed textile process.

Danica Maier is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University, and a visiting tutor on the MA Textiles in Contemporary Art Practice at Goldsmiths College. Originally from Philadelphia, USA, she currently lives and works in London. In May 2005, she completed a residency and solo exhibition with the Fundación Migliorisi in Asuncion, Paraguay, funded by the Arts Council England and the British Council. During 2004, she was an invited artist as part of Vasl Karachi, Pakistan and Gasworks, London, both Triangle Arts Trust affiliates. She has exhibited in London, Glasgow, Karachi, Philadelphia, Santiago, Chicago and New York.

Miranda Whall is a Fine Art Sculpture graduate of the Royal Academy Schools. During 2001-02, she was an Associate Research Student at Goldsmiths College, and the Wealthley Bequest Fellow at the University of Central England in Birmingham in 1998. She has just completed an Arts Council England, North East Artist in Residence in Berlin. She has been commissioned by Grizedale Arts; Stills Gallery, Edinburgh and ISIS Arts, Newcastle. She was shortlisted for The Jerwood Drawing Prize Drawing Prize in 2004, and has exhibited in London, Antwerp, Edinburgh, Newcastle, BALTIC Centre Gateshead and the RMIT Project Space, Melbourne.

Sally O’Reilly is an artist and writer based in London. She has contributed to numerous art magazines and publications including Art Monthly, Contemporary, Frieze, Artists Newsletter and the Guardian. She has been commissioned to write catalogue essays for many national and international galleries including BALTIC, Rhodes & Mann, Matt’s Gallery, Camden Arts Centre, the ICA, the Jerwood Foundation and East, as well as for galleries based in Los Angeles, The Hague, Frankfurt and Santiago. She is committed to art education and regularly lectures at colleges across the UK.

Intraducible, a solo exhibition by Danica Maier is currently showing at the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles at Goldsmiths College. The exhibition features work made by Maier during her recent residency in Paraguay.

Constance Howard Centre, Goldsmiths College, Deptford Town Hall (basement) New Cross Road London SE14 6AF Telephone 020 7717 2210 Email connitex@gold.ac.uk www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/constance-howard

Intraducible is open by appointment Monday to Thursday 10.30am to 4.30pm until Thursday 27 October 2005