Have A Butcher’s

Curated by Francesca Gavin

Bianca Bondi / Ben Sansbury / Tenant of Culture

​

 

Butchery as a profession came to the fore during late 10th century, when The Worshipful Company of Butchers Guild which was formed in Britain. The display of meat in complex, often macabre, displays in shop spaces windows during the 19th century, with the rise of shop culture and middle class consumerism. In 2014, a British butcher was forced to remove a display of dead animals from his Suffolk shop window due to complaints. However, due to demand, his traditional window of hanging pigs, game and other meats was reinstated.

 

This exhibition of three suspended sculptures explores the idea of the butcher’s window and the techniques of display. The phrase ‘have a butcher’s’ is Cockney slang for the process of looking at something. It plays on how ‘a butcher’s hook’ rhymes with ‘look’. The three artists in this exhibition have all made new hanging works playing on ideas of the window and the mechanisms of capitalist consumption.

 

British artist Ben Sansbury studied Central St Martins and the Royal College of Art, London and has solo shows at SPACE, London, a solo presentation at NADA Miami with Cope Cybulski, and was included in group shows at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, V22 London and MU Museum, Eindhoven. 

 

Paris-based, South African artist Bianca Bondi, studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Arts Paris and has shown at Galerie 22 48m2, IK Lab in Mexico, Galerist Istanbul and at the Fondation Ricard. Her work will be included in the forthcoming  Biennale de Lyon.

 

Dutch artist Tenant of Culture completed a BA at ArtEZ School of the Arts, Arnhem. followed by an MA in Textiles in at the Royal College of Art. She has exhibited at the Fondation Cartier, Paris (2019), has exhibited at Paris Internationale (2019) and Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich and throughout Europe. 

 

Francesca Gavin is a curator and writer based in London. She is the Art Editor of Twin, editor at large at Kaleidoscope and contributing editor at Good Trouble and Beauty Papers, is the author of six books, and has a monthly radio show Rough Version on NTS Radio on art and music. She was the co-curator of the Historical Exhibition of Manifesta11 and recently curated the Sam Jablon show in London with Ballon Rouge.