Abstract

Hosted in the artist run space at Over+Out, Lincoln, Crocodiles with a Second Skin Thrash, is an exhibition that picks around the idea of re-using existing material within an artist’s practice, whether it be the use of existing artworks by the artist or the incorporation of the work of other artists into their own.

The exhibition is a sequel of sorts to A Blind Python with Jewelled Eyes, shown in the Greestone Gallery, also in Lincoln, at the tail end of 2011. This exhibition, also curated by Andrew Bracey and Kate Buckley, included many of the same artists, it hosted work containing two parallel elements within it; being both in one state and another, often with the suggestion of a parasitic relationship. Both exhibitions take their titles from imagery in J. G. Ballard’s The Crystal World,a dystopic novel where an unidentified and beautiful disease spreads through a rainforest turning everything into shimmering crystalline forms. The artists in these two exhibitions all, in some way, have the ability to transmute material and imagery from one thing to another, performing a kind of artistic alchemy.
Artists included were: Chris Bagnall, Nathan Baxter, Andrew Bracey, Kate Buckley, Joana Cifre Cerda, Fiona Curran, Thomas Cuthbertson, Laura Dodgson, Cinema Elective, Dave Griffiths, Toby Huddlestone, Peter Lamb, Ross Oliver, David Osbaldeston, Aislinn Ritchie, Alec Shepley, Emily Speed and with a special contribution by Laura Mahony.