Greta Alfaro: A Very Crafty and Tricky Contrivance
Monday, 1 October 2012
Private View: Thursday 27 September, 18.00 – 21.00
Fish and Coal Building, Granary Square,
Off Goods Way, London, N1C 4AA
A Very Tricky and Crafty Contrivance, 2012, by Greta Alfaro. B/W photography. 65 x 125cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
Greta Alfaro: A Very Crafty and Tricky Contrivance
28 September – 24 October 2012
The Genesis Foundation is delighted to present the first solo exhibition in the UK by London-based Spanish artist Greta Alfaro. A Very Crafty and Tricky Contrivance, curated by Flora Fairbairn, presents two video works and a series of photographs in the Fish and Coal Building, a semi-derelict Grade II listed Victorian site.
Central to the exhibition is a projection showing a video piece filmed by a rat in the building. Equipped with a specially created camera device attached to a harness, the rat captures through its lens a group of Edwardian office workers as they go about their daily business.
A second corresponding installation shows footage recorded by the rat inside a miniature rodent-scale recreation of a similar office space.
The exhibition reflects the artist’s acute interests in public versus private identity, and the contrast between aspects of the self we identify with as a society, versus the darker, more hidden side.
In 2011 Alfaro graduated with distinction with a Masters in Photography from the Royal College of Art, where she was the first beneficiary of the Genesis Photography Scholarship. The exhibition is the culmination of the Foundation’s ongoing support of the artist.
The exhibition’s lowly-lit and empty rooms reflect the building’s awkward and ghost-like presence. In an area which now bustles with life, the Fish and Coal Building has an outdated and silent presence that belongs to another time.
Alfaro was born in 1977 in Pamplona in Spain. She studied Fine Art at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia and Photography at the Royal College of Art, London. Alfaro has exhibited individually at Invención, curated by Andrea Paasch, Museum Ex Teresa Arte Actual, México City (2012); ELOGIO DE LA BESTIA. CENTRO DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO HUARTE, Pamplona, Spain (2010), and In Ictu Oculi, curated by Antonia Gaeta, Carpe Diem Art & Research, Lisbon, Portugal (2009) and Ricorrenza, curated by Alba Braza Böils, Dryphoto rate contemporanea, Prato, Italy (2008). Group shows include Whitechapel Open at the Whitechapel Gallery in London (2012); Bêtes off at La Conciergerie in Paris, (2011); Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2010 at the ICA London; Drama, Baby, Drama at Kunsthaus Essen, Germany, (2012), and Inanimate Beings. Inéditos at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, (2011). Her video work has also been screened at the Rencontres Internationales at the Pompidou in Paris (2010) and at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2011). In 2011 the artist received the CAM art prize, Spain.
A publication about Greta Alfaro’s work is being issued to accompany the exhibition, and is designed by Lola Halifa-Legrand, with specially commissioned texts by Flora Fairbairn, Morgan Quaintance and Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz.