25 St. James's Street
London  SW1A 1HG

24 October 2001 - 2 January 2002

Angela Wright
Economist Carpet

In the foyer exhibition space of The Economist Tower Angela Wright will create a floor-based installation entitled Economist Carpet. The work will be made up of thousands of pieces of porcelain clay carefully stacked against each other, producing a large area resembling a petrified fleece. It will wind its way round the L-shaped space in an irregular organic strip flooded with coloured light. The unfired clay fragments are the chance remains of woven & shrink-cracked clay 'nets'. The stark, solid form of the surrounding architecture will be softened by the introduction of this densely packed installation, while the solid yet fragile porcelain shards reflect the delicate details in the surrounding Portland stone.

All of Wright's major installations develop through studio-sketches whose form is only finalised in relation to a specific site. Economist Carpet will be made situ & in real time - its relations with its austere architectural setting, and its other effects and meanings, will emerge during its making.

In the early 1980s Wright attended the London College of Fashion and subsequently ran a couturier and design business in central London. Wright graduated from the BA Fine Art and Ceramics course at Camberwell School of Art, London Institute, in 1995 and has since exhibited widely. Group exhibitions have included the touring exhibition Angels and Mechanics (1996), Bankside Browser, internet project, Tate Gallery, London (1999), and 4 Artists at Christie's, Christie's Auctioneers, London (2000). Solo projects have included Imbedded, at Christie's, London (1999), and An Installation in Silk at Five Princelet Street Gallery, London (2001).

Lesley Davy
Urban Scan

As part of the autumn exhibition at The Economist, Lesley Davy will present Urban Scan, an installation of two parts in The Plaza at 25 St. James's Street. Davy's works are multi-disciplinary, involving printmaking, photography, sculpture and light projections. They explore images of marks made on the earth's surface, either from a macro perspective or, as in this instance, from a microscopic one.

The first part of Urban Scan consists of photographs of microscopic scratches made by the movement of people over surfaces in urban environments, from stone pavements and concrete platforms to marble floors. These images have been magnified and printed onto sheets of adhesive vinyl 'floor media', which will be placed around The Plaza, stuck flat to the concrete slabs. Accompanying this floor-based work will be a large animated light projection on the north wall of The Plaza. Visible only at night, the projection will also depict scars on man-made surfaces, but this time captured by Davy's camera under ultraviolet light, giving the most definition to the most minute of marks.

Davy graduated from the MA Art in Architecture course at The University of East London in 2000, and also studied on the Postgraduate Printmaking course at Central St. Martin's Art College, London in 1995. She has exhibited in the 'Hayvend' project at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and the ICA, and at Pitshanger Museum, Ealing, with a major installation called Magnetic Field (1998). Other exhibitions include Light Wave at Orleans House Museum, Twickenham (1999), and Field at Salford University Gallery (1997).

Current Exhibition

Forthcoming Exhibition