For this her first solo exhibition at SEVENTEEN Collis has produced a series of interventions that refer to the accidental and neglected, within the context of gallery space. The exhibition will be easy to overlook, as a cursory glance might lead the viewer to believe the gallery was empty. However, further investigation of the space will reward the viewer, leading them towards Collis notions of hidden labour, within a complex network of contradictions and revelations. Dont get your hopes up questions the structures and methods of its own production, together with the viewers most basic assumptions about artistic produc tion and display.

Made good (DETAIL)
Length 27 cm
Coral, black onyx, 18 carat white gold (hallmarked), diamond, silver. Edition of 10

INTALLATION VIEW (Thursday 1st Mar – Saturday 14th Apr 2007
DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP, at Seventeen Gallery, London)

Areas of the gallery walls appear to have been left unfinished after the de-installation of the previous show. Unusually the behind-the-scenes paraphernalia of display such as screw-heads, nail holes, rawl plugs and pencil marks are still in evidence, together with seemingly unintentional marks associated with the movement of art work. A bucket catches drips from the ceiling and a general air of neglect pervades.

Waltzer (DETAIL)
2007
127.5 x 37 x 11 cm
Wooden broom, opals, turquoise, garnets, seed pearls, mother of pearl, black diamonds, white diamonds, fresh water pearls, coral, black onyx, marcacite

Gabo’s formative years were in Munich, where he was inspired by and actively participated in the artistic, scientific, and philosophical debates of the early years of the 20th century. Because of his involvement in these intellectual debates, Gabo became a leading figure in Moscow’s avant garde, in post-Revolution Russia. It was in Munich that Gabo attended the lectures of art historian Heinrich Wolfflin and gained knowledge of the ideas of Einstein and his fellow innovators of scientific theory, as well as the philosopher Henri Bergson. As a student of medicine, natural science and engineering, his understanding of the order present in the natural world mystically links all creation in the universe. Just before the onset of the First World War in 1914, Gabo discovered contemporary art, by reading Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art, which asserted the principles of abstract art.

Gabo’s vision is imaginative and passionate, over the years his exhibitions have generated immense enthusiasm because of the emotional power present in his sculpture. Gabo said of his own sculpture that he himself was “making images to communicate my feelings of the world.” In his work, Gabo used time and space as construction elements and in them solid matter unfolds and becomes beautifully surreal and otherworldly. His sculptures initiate a connection between what is tangible and intangible, between what is simplistic in its reality and the unlimited possibilities of intuitive imagination. Imaginative as Gabo was, his practicality lent itself to the conception and production of his works. He devised systems of construction which were not only used for his elegantly elaborate sculptures but were viable for architecture as well. He was also innovative in his works, using a wide variety of materials including the earliest plastics, fishing line, bronze, sheets of Perspex, and boulders. He sometimes even used motors to move the sculpture.

Linear Construction No. 4
1962
Bronze, stainless steel, piano wire x 63.5

Construction in Space with Crystalline Centre 1938-40
Perspex and celluloid (Sa)
object 324 x 470 x 220 mm

Naum Gabo 1890-1977

Linear Construction No. 2 1970-71
Plastic and nylon filament (Sa)
object 1149 x 835 x 835 mm

Mess Hall, Chicago IL 2006-2007.