The New School House gallery – York Curated by Robert Teed and Paula Jackson.
"I have always enjoyed market places; they seem to belie the hard profit drenched transactions of the shop or bank, leaking instead, a sense of an older aspect of consumption and need. These are times when common values are looking in directions away from the haste and greed of our late twentieth century selves towards a state where value is no longer sliding exclusively towards capital and moving more towards wellbeing and the new necessity for better understanding our environment; a kind of emerging ecology of values." John Newling
"As a contemporary installation sculptor, John Newling makes composites of place-form-value, which emerge from the specific and contingent nature of their social situations. Newling realises this potential in his artwork, sensing the possibilities for material exchange, which at the same time gives rise to an alchemy of values." Dr Jonathan Willett
The ‘Stall of Gathered Things’ brings into differing relations many objects that Newling has deployed over 20 years of installations that review ‘social capital’ and ideas of an ‘ecology of place’ through transactions with and through people as participants in the work. From gilded calves to a lottery machine each object sits in relation to the other within the frame of a market stall; all gathered together in a complex set of conversations both material and metaphoric.
The work is seen in parallel with Newling’s project ‘Market of Hidden Labours’ (nine market stalls all talking of the hidden expressions and public transactions. Each stall occupied by one of nine commissioned artists.) 2nd & 3rd of May.
Text from New School House Gallery press release.