Chloe Carroll Presents Andrew Pierre Hart
I write this for you – the year of the violin 1980 / 2022
6 - 24 June 2022
Curated by Chloe Carroll
Artist Andrew Pierre Hart presents "I write this for you", a response in paint, sound and text to a series of antique stringed instruments in the Robert Young Antiques collection. A nineteenth-century skeleton violin, in particular, forms the focal point around which Hart constructs his narrative. Likely not made with the intention of being played – although the worn chin rest might suggest otherwise – Hart coaxes the object out of its muteness and animates its sonic potential in a sound work recorded onsite at Robert Young Antiques. A large-scale painting fills the space of the window: a loose graphic score or visualisation of song.
Known for his creation of sonically-charged, speculative worlds, inhabited by newly imagined deities of Black contemporary music amid inky blue fields of thick sound, Hart here zooms in on a single love-struck figure. Suspended in an indeterminate time between the past of the antique violin and present communication technologies, the subject finds himself unable to express his affections in writing, turning instead to the instrument at his side. I write this for you documents the process of drafting an unfinished love song, its ending deferred, its writer caught between states of longing and reaching. Blue light will flood the Robert Young Antiques window each night after dark, inviting viewers to linger in the nocturnal space of composition: a space favoured by the artist himself when creating work.
A brief text by the artist floats in vinyl on the glass, along with a QR code through which viewers can access Hart's sound work, made up of sounds from the antique instruments as well as other objects in the collection: a grandfather clock, a fistful of marbles, a sheep's bell. This new body of work continues Hart's exploration into the potential of sound, acoustic and analogue modes of creating alongside the digital, and the imagining of past and future worlds.
Andrew Pierre Hart lives and works in London. Deeply influenced by music, Hart’s work is a renegotiation of the visual legacies of Western abstraction and figuration, probing connections between the phenomena, language and representation of sound in painting. He holds a MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art (2019) and BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts (2017). He is a recipient of the ArtAngel 'Thinking Time' Award (2020) and Tiffany & Co. x Outset Studiomakers Prize (2019). Recent exhibitions include Secret of Lightness, Parafin, London (2022), ICF's Diaspora Pavillon 2: London, Block 336, London (2022), Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Southbank Centre, London (2021); Run the Box, A Solo Show by Andrew Hart, Guts Gallery, London (2020); Collective Intimacies at Theaster Gates Black Image Corporation, 180 The Strand, London (2019); Royal College of Art Graduate Show (2019).
Chloe Carroll is a curator and writer based in London. Her writing has been published in Art Monthly, Elephant, ArtReview and art-agenda. Curatorial work includes The Unexpected Beautiful Phrase, a day-long programme of live performance, sound, poetry, film and discussion at Nottingham Contemporary (2019). Contemporary Collaborations: Invites is a series of exhibitions by guest curators for Contemporary Collaborations at Robert Young Antiques. Over four exhibitions, the selected curators will invite artists to explore and respond to the Robert Young Antiques collection with newly commissioned work. Contemporary Collaborations is an initiative which sets out to explore the graphic, sculptural, material and textural qualities of antique works, cross-pollinating them in collaboration with contemporary artists.
