Manon Steyaert in her South London studio shot by Ocki, Blue Shop Gallery
Blue Shop Gallery presents
Manon Steyaert
'CACHE - CACHE’
1st - 18th June 2023
PV Drinks Wednesday 31st May 6-9pm
72 Brixton Road, Oval SW9 6BH
Artist Talk 17th June 12pm at Blue Shop Gallery
RSVP essential hello@blueshopcottage.com
Gallery opening hours:
Wednesday - Sunday | 11am - 6pm
MANON STEYAERT
Manon Steyaert (b.1996) received her graduate degree from Central St. Martins, MAF in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts in 2019. Recent Exhibition include: Solo Show “Passing Colour” with with Annika Nuttall Gallery (Aarhus, Denmark, 2023), Beyond Figuration: Then and Now with Gillian Jason Gallery (London, UK, 2023) Westbund Art Fair with Cub_ism Artspace (Shanghai, China, 2022) Material World at Liliya Gallery (London, UK, 2022), Point de Vue at Blender Gallery (Athens, Greece, 2021), Realities at Artistellar Gallery (London, UK, 2021), Noticing Colour at Annika Nuttall Gallery (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2021), Hétérotopie at Bubble n’ Squeak Gallery (Brussels, Belgium 2021).
Manon Steyaert is a French-British artist based in London. Steyaert’s practice is situated between the two worlds of painting and sculpture, able to create both wall-based works and free-standing abstract sculptures. With a strong background in fashion as well as art, the artist pays homage to both traditional and non-traditional mediums throughout her practice. Focusing mainly on the aesthetic quality of silicone, Steyaert also utilises canvas, scrim, wood and metal, consequently drawing on the visual language of both architecture and painting.
Allowing herself to be led by the intrinsic qualities of her materials, Steyaert’s creative process is intuitive and process-driven. Silicone as a medium is one that requires time, attention, and immense control. Hand-pouring each sheet of silicone, the curing process alone can take days, and the finished form is as delicate as it is physical. In many of Steyaert’s works, the silicone is treated like fabric: draped and folded across its structural support, creating beautiful compositions that challenge our perception of what it is that makes a painting or a sculpture. As a result, movement, abstraction and action are core to Steyaert’s work. Her abstracted forms sit in limbo between two accepted modes of art, generating a unique space for curiosity and development.
Colour and form work together closely within Steyaert’s work, guiding the viewer’s eye along the undulations of her chosen material. Making use of a wide variety of colours, often melding them together to create near-psychedelic patterns across the surface of the silicone, Steyaert’s work is simultaneously simple and meditative. In recent works, Steyaert has made us of metallic pigments, which flash and glare as the silicone is manipulated across the stretchers, interrupting the viewer’s gaze and drawing further attention to the uniqueness of both the colours used and material surface itself.
The importance of materiality of Steyaert’s practice is undeniable. Alternative perspectives, interpretations and viewpoints are continually encouraged within the artists’ ever-evolving practice. Unable to be defined within ‘traditional’ boundaries of painting or sculpture, her work embodies the transgressive nature of conceptual and contemporary artistic practice.
CACHE-CACHE
For her first solo exhibition at Blue Shop Gallery, Manon Steyaert presents a new body of work: ‘Cache-Cache’. Born 1996, Steyaert is a French-British artist working in London. Her practice is situated between the two worlds of painting and sculpture. With a strong background in fashion, the artist pays homage to both traditional and non-traditional mediums throughout her practice.
Taking inspiration from her childhood in France, notably the game ‘cache-cache’ (hide-and-seek), Steyaert visually manifests sensory memories, adolescent curiosity and our ever present human desire to search for the hidden. Steyaert suggests a direct relationship between pure childish pleasure and her process of creating art objects, and in doing so seeks to affect a viewer's perception of painting and sculpture.
Interested in the limbo-state between two mediums, Steyaert creates work that intertwines elements from both, allowing her to proudly hang works on the boundary line, creating a discourse examining the limitations and freedoms of the complex space that exists between dimensions. Primarily utilising silicone, Steyaert uses the material as a playful depiction of canvas, questioning its role within painting. Must we adhere to art historical context or can the painted surface extend past its natural expectation? For this exhibition, large scale silicone works are mounted traditionally on stretcher bars, but her hanging structures also expand to perspex and oak. ‘Cache-Cache’ introduces a new element of Steyaert’s practice:, using transparent acrylic frames in which silicone strips are woven in and out of, rather than the classical draping over a wooden frame. These new works challenge the nature of the relationship between work and wall. Steyaert’s interrogation is of structure and its relationship to surface: stretcher bars are painted white to sink into the gallery wall in chameleon-esque fashion, acrylic structures are removed of pigment and transparent to allow silicone to float in space. Work extends further into the gallery space than before, permitting a wider viewpoint for the viewer to engage with. The structural transparency grants the surface an appearance of levitation and can even disappear from eyesight when gazed upon from certain angles.
Through her mature investigations of material, the work is granted intelligence and agency: it can choose to manifest itself, or in fact hide... The structural oscillation between space and non space encourages the works, they themselves, to engage in a game of cache-cache with the viewer. Just as she pulls taught silicone over various materials, she also pulls taught the boundaries of our expectation, creating a tense metaphorical surface for our questions and curiosities to bounce across.
Steyaert also includes framed works on paper, often used to test colour and movement, as well as possible draping shapes; they serve as an insight into the planning process used for realising her larger works. Tissue paper is used as the painted surface to emulate the transparency further communicated in the larger works and, watered down acrylic paint is used to explore a natural flow of brush. The more traditional use of the paint medium at this early stage of development allows dynamic gestures to infiltrate the silicone work where this freedom of hand is less present.
Steyaert connotes the materiality and form of silicone, particularly when draped, to ideologies and visual language relating to the feminine. Her recent investigations of colour, exploration of rounder forms and inclusion of transparencies draw on this to create a whole that romanticises the feminine.
More recently inspired by colours present in botanicals, gardens and parks, attempting to subvert the dense artificiality of silicone, and drawing inspiration from ‘The Rise of the Sun’ and ‘The Setting of the Sun’ by Boucher, Steyaert utilises a natural colour palette to allow the works to float, billow and levitate much like the fabric in both paintings. Her colour palette has evolved through the evolution of her curiosities, taking inspiration from the changing of seasons, man-made objects, architecture and nature found in the everyday.
The colours that infiltrate ‘Cache-Cache’ are hazy, allowing light to penetrate surface. Structural investigations allow surface to float in space. The multicoloured silicone sheets allow variations of colour to play together, allow forms to dance between folds, falling in and out of perception, enriching the viewer's gaze, simulating a game of cache-cache.
Manon Steyaert CV
2023
“Cache-Cache”, Solo show, Blue Shop Gallery, London, UK, June
“Between Figuration: Then and Now”, Group Show, Gillian Jason Gallery, May 4th – Jun 4th
“Passing Colour” Solo show, Annika Nuttall Gallery, Denmark, Feb 24th – Apr 1st
2022
Group Show, Westbund Art Fair, Cub_ism artspace, Shanghai, China, 10th-13th Nov
“Gestura II” group Show, Marie-José Gallery, Ldn, UK, 12th-24th Sept
Group Show, Pictura Gallery, London, UK, 7th-9th Sept
Group show, Entre Art Fair, Annika Nuttall Gallery, Copenhagen, 25th – 28th Aug
Solo Series Launch, Artistellar, online, June 16th-26th
“Metamorphosis”, group show, Salon Design, New York, USA, May
“Works on Paper”, group show, Blue Shop Cottage, online, April
“Material World”, group show, Liliya Gallery, London, 24th March- 19th April
“Between Emotion and Sanity”, grous show, Shanghai, China, March 12th- July 14th
“Venomous”, group show, D Contemporary, Mayfair, London, Curated by enfant terribles, January 18th -28th
2021
“Realities”, group show, Artistellar, London, UK, December 2nd – 5th
“Atmosfer”, group show, Nero Design Gallery, Arrezo Italy, December
“Point de Vue”, Solo Show, Blender Gallery, Athens, November 4th – Dec 4th
“Podcast exhibition”, group show, Hackney Downs studios, curated by The Artist Contemporary, London 19th September
Group show – curated by Karen Tronel, London, 6th-18th July
“From a safe distance”, group collaboration, The auction collective, curated by Raen Barnsley, 19th May - 9th June
“Soft spot” – Group show, Eve Leibe Gallery, 24th – 31st May
“Hétérotopie” – Group Show, Bubble n’ Squeak, Brussels, March – April
“Becoming Habits: Chapter 3” - with Studi0, St Moritz, March - April
“Noticing Colour” solo show with Annika Nuttall Gallery, Denmark, April – June
“New Breed” group show with Gallery Nosco online, Nov 2020 – Jan 2021
Group Show, London Art Fair with Eve Leibe Gallery online, Jan 20th – 31st
2020
“Curated for Christmas” – Bowes Parris Gallery + All Mouth Gallery, Dec, London
“Interrupted Contemplation” solo show, virtual exhibition, Eve Leibe Gallery, Nov - Dec
“After Hours” (group show) – Bowes Parris Gallery Nov-Dec, London
“Hexalogy” (group show) – PADA residency, 27th August – 29th
“Summer Tracks” (group show) – Virtual exhibition, Programa Taide, 22nd July – 6th September
“Anti-Freeze” (group show) – Virtual exhibition, curated by Cassandra Bowes, 25th May – 8th June
2019
"Ma Toile" (SOLO SHOW) - A Room Upstairs Gallery, 20th Nov-20th Dec (UK, Ldn)
"Misbehaving Surfaces" (SOLO SHOW) - The Who Gallery, J.lindeberg showroom, 25th Sept-30th Oct (UK, Ldn)
"off grid" (group show) - Cookhouse Gallery, Mar 21st (UK,Ldn)
"MANON" (SOLO SHOW) - The Who Gallery, Not just another store, Mar 8th-Aprl 8th (UK, Ldn)
"13th Hour" (group show) - BSMT gallery, Feb 18t (UK)
"Wicked Game" (group show) - Cookhouse Gallery, Jan 24th - 25th (UK)
2018
"E Pluribus Unum"(group show) - Cookhouse Gallery, Dec 13th
"Obsessions"(group show) - Cookhouse Gallery, Nov 9th
Degree Show - Central Saint Martins, May 23rd - 27th
2017
First Thursdays, Creative Debuts (group show) - Black & White Building
Awards/ Prizes / Residencies
Clifford Chance Sculpture Award 2019 – Shortlisted
Back Room Open Call 2020 – Shortlisted, Dec exhibition
PADA artist residency, Portugal 03/08/2020 - 30/08/2020
Publications
Page Feature in Interior Magazine with Salon Design
“Meet the maker”, Jardan Furniture feature
Elle Decoration October issue 2022
Cub_Ism_artspace exhibition interview – Haoyang Wang
“Up and Coming” – Sight unseen by Laura Todd
Colour Hive - MIX 68 Helter-skelter Surface
Parapluie – “Friday Feature”
HITxHIT online interview
Artbasic – online interview
La Novicia Revista n.3 front cover page
Visual Space – online interview
Made in Bed Sotheby’s – online interview
Studi0 gallery book
Hector Campbell Interview “Manon Steyaert”
Art Plugged interview by Verity Babbs