Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London

8 –25 Feb 2024

Group exhibition featuring Nancy Allen, Teal Griffin, Harry Grundy, Yoojin Lee. Curated by Lucy Cowling and Andrew Price.

Pebbles and ribbons, feathers and pillows, a windswept carrier bag, the inside of furniture; they vibrate at the edges of the imagination. It is in the house, on the street, in the park, and at the beach where we discover boundless metaphors of intimate humanness. 

Small Blue Thing brings together artists who share an interest in the poetics of everyday objects and contexts. Through sculpture, painting and installation, they attend to the resonances of small things. Each reconfigures the familiar as a source of surprise, a space to dream, filled with intrigue, humour, or pathos.

The artworks in Small Blue Thing are catalysts for mind-wandering – a particular form of attention too often lost in a culture demanding our constant activation, with no time to stand and stare. As Suzanne Vega sings in the eponymous 1985 track, whether lost inside your pocket, raining down in pieces, or scattering like light, we think of these artworks as constellations of the curious. They are invitations to reconsider the world outside of the gallery, and to ponder how the most banal of things welcome human complexity.

Images courtesy of Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop. Photos by Paul Tucker.