NADA New York: Tim Garwood, Emily Hunt

2 - 5 May 2024 
For NADA New York 2024, Sim Smith will present a two-person presentation of paintings by British artist Tim Garwood and works in bronze and ceramic by Australian artist Emily Hunt. The collaboration will explore ideas around cosmic energy, magic, landscape and its effects on the mind and body, collective memory, association and the history of cultures and specifically in relation to Hunt’s work, the history of witchcraft. 
 
NADA New York
Sim Smith, Booth 2.06
Emily Hunt and Tim Garwood
May 2–5, 2024
548 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Thursday, May 2, 4–7pm
Friday, May 3, 11am–7pm
Saturday, May 4, 11am–7pm
Sunday, May 5, 11am–5pm
 
Hunt works in ceramic, painting and etching on paper but for this presentation, the gallery will focus on Hunt’s bronze servitor rings and ceramic wall tablets. 100 Servitor rings have been made specifically for this collaboration, made of bronze and shimmering gems and residing on glazed clay bodies. In occult and magical traditions, a Servitor is a created being that is endowed with a specific task, varying depending on the practitioner’s intention. Wearing these rings allows us to partake in magic daily, portable works of art with hidden powers. Rings are important jewels of empowerment for they are linked to the hands, the point of creation. The rings portray old crones, the wicked witch, the gnarly old woman; they are tricky, playful and get what they want, by not always by the most acceptable means. These women are traditionally invisible, but invisibility can be a superpower which makes them the perfect device for a tactile magical object. Hunt’s ceramic wall tablets, made of Limoges porcelain and glazed in gold lustre, depict portraits of women who practised serous magic in commemoration of their power and prowess. 
 
Garwood’s paintings seem to provide the perfect landscape for these magical scenes. Accumulated and adapted over many layers and mediums over time, the paintings brew and stir, covering and revealing in equal measure. The works are deeply rooted in the new surroundings of his Somerset studio in rural England, celebrating its ecosystem, its colours, textures, wide skies, and big moons. The paintings are constructed though observations and memories of discoveries in the landscape, through mists, downpours and blazing suns. Structures of raindrops on a windscreen may lead to splatters of glitter across heavily painted works, fronds of fabric seem to embody burly hillsides and moss.  Animal tracks are scratched out of abundant daubes of paint and north stars appear in collaged gemstones, and yet the paintings feel wildly abstract in their nature, simply alluding to a feeling of place. 
 
Garwood swamps surfaces of glass, jute or tablecloths in a multitude of materials from glitter, splintered wood and plant fronds to jewels, lace and denim, exploring a visual language across multiple surfaces. He tests each material’s ability and performance under the weight of studio debris and heavy pours of paint. The outcome is something ethereal, a capturing of an energy that is hard to explain but seemingly familiar. They are vital, visceral works that emerge from clouds of ink, graphic forms, found objects and painterly abstraction.
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