Vertigo: Heike Gallmeier

Opening night 21 August 2015
22 August–4 October 2015

This summer NN Contemporary Art will be hosting an exhibition of new work by Berlin- based artist Heike Gallmeier entitled Vertigo. Gallmeier takes us through her journey from Berlin to Northampton with an assortment of collected materials used to create various installations en route.

Using a transport van as a small mobile studio, Heike Gallmeier travelled, worked and lived in the van for ten days, avoiding main roads and collecting discarded objects and materials on the way. Alongside the mobile studio cube and an installation of the collected objects, the artist shows complex staged photographs. Heike Gallmeier creates sculptural constellations based on art-historical imagery. Her works reconstruct pictoral spaces from old paintings into spatial and abstract compositional structures. Gallmeier's pictorial exploration leads her from the two- dimensional painting, to the three-dimensional sculptural installation and from there back to the two-dimensional picture for her works that take photographic form as their final appearance; the picture-based sculpture repeats a painting and the photographed sculpture repeats the repetition.

Gallmeier's three dimensional works are comprised of found objects and architectural elements. Each element is devoid of autonomy, validated through the systematic, pictorial arrangement and from the relationship with the other elements in space. Gallmeier's installations are like optical devices, or spatial viewing diagrams. The predetermination of the found material corresponds to the predetermination of the art-historical imagery. The found elements are parallel to the found art-historical images whose pictorial spaces they reconstruct. Gallmeier's oscillation between two and three dimensions blurs the difference between actual space and illusional space, between pictorial representation and sculptural representation and between the architectural and the speculative.

This project is part of NN's Ways to think about diaspora season and inspired by the German population of Northampton. Vertigo follows Poland International and Yael Bartana's And Europe Will be Stunned. Vertigo runs concurrently with the offsite project Filaments from the Dandelion Clock.

About the artist:

Born in Berlin in 1972, Heike Gallmeier studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Mainz and finished her studies in the master class of the sculpture department at the Art Academy Berlin-Weissensee. She has exhibited internationally and received awards and stipends of Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn, Senate of Berlin, Goethe Institut and Deutsches Studienzentrum in Venice.

Notes:

NN is a contemporary art space in the centre of Northampton.

Opening hours:

Wednesday–Saturday 11am–6pm Sunday 2–5pm Free admission

List of events:

Drop In Creative Workshop - Recycled Den building workshop

22 August 2015, 12–2pm

Join Tamsyn Payne & Catherine Hemelryk in NN's Courtyard to build dens and shelters using recycled materials found in and around Northamptonshire. Bring along any unwanted bed sheets or blankets to contribute to the forts! Any unused materials will become gallery rags or go recycled.For further information contact Catherine at Catherine@NNContemporaryArt.org.

Write Club

17 October 2015, 7pm

Write Club is for anyone wanting to brush up on their art writing from artist statements to critical texts, get together for peer critique over a coffee in the Café. This session will look at artist statement writing. For further information contact Catherine at Catherine@NNContemporaryArt.org.

From Art To Commerce

5 September 2015, 11am–1pm / 3 October 2015, 11am–1pm

From Art To Commerce is a regular workshop at NN for artists and makers at all stages of their career. Run by NN's Development Director Tracey Clarke, each session has a particular business focus from business modelling to marketing and finance. Come along for the opportunity to network with other artists and for tips on how to develop your creative practice into a business. For further information contact Tracey at Tracey@NNContemporaryArt.org.

Crit Group

24 October 2015, 7pm

NN hosts the Crit Group for artists at all stages of their career to come together to discuss their work in progress.

The Social

2 October 2015, 8pm

A social night to bring together anyone and everyone working in the creative sector across Northamptonshire.

CALL FOR IMAGES: bring a memory stick with images of your work to become part of the slide show that is the backdrop for the event.