I’m pleased to have co curated a forthcoming show at the Cello Factory, London with Alex Hinks. The show features artist whose work involves scale models or maquettes in some way, either as an inspiration, a final outcome, or as part of their working process. It brings together emerging and established artists from the UK and beyond.
The use of maquettes and models by artists and architects has a well-established history. Maquettes are three-dimensional sketches, in effect, conveying practical and ideological information before a final work is realised. Models are representations of physical objects, usually in miniature. Models | Maquettes features the work of artists who use these as the basis of realised outcomes that include painting, photography, drawing, installation and sculpture, as well as including the work of those for whom model-making is the end result of their creative production.
The artists in this exhibition all deal with questions of scale. Rather than focusing exclusively on the small-scale, some enlarge the miniature format to the gigantic. Others use the maquette as the basis to create tiny, self-contained worlds of reference. Perhaps the appeal of models and miniatures lies not in our ability to control them but in the fantasy of being overwhelmed by the world around us. Conversely it might lie in the fascination with spaces that, through their impossibly small size, force use to navigate and understand them purely perceptually. The use of models and maquettes enables this engagement with scale and questioning of what is ‘real’ and what is illusory. – Juliette Losq, February 2020
