Sam Austen & Fani Parali: SENTIENT SUMMER

4 Jun-17 Jul 2021

Overview

A night garden
Of scattered mutant pieces
Plants and creatures
Morphing out of themselves
Under moon light render

Sundy is pleased to present Sentient Summer, a two person exhibition by Sam Austen and Fani Parali. Sentient Summer explores themes around wildness, apocalypse, transformation and science fiction, using installation, sculpture and sound. This show is part of the ongoing exhibition series Lovers where artist couples are invited to exhibit their individual practices alongside each other at Sundy.  

Austen and Parali’s collaboration is conceived as a night garden inhabited by plants, creatures and objects created by the artists. There is a strong sense of an alternative reality distinctly separate from what is going on outside of the walls of the exhibition space, turning one wall into a portal from which the inhabitants of the garden morph and shape-shift into others. Most of the creatures found in the garden are hybrids of some sort, plants turn into insects, planets turn into flowers, humans turn into plants, plants into animals. A soft and equalizing light envelopes the garden, stripping away hierarchies and harmonizing all beings.

Fani Parali (b. Greece, lives and works in London) studied BA Sculpture at Camberwell College of Arts and completed her postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools in 2017.
Selected solo and group exhibitions include: Drawing Biennale 2021, Drawing Room, London; AONYX and DREPAN & THE MINDERS OF THE WARM, Southwark Park Galleries, London, 2020; The Terrace of Lungs, ZC, London, 2019; Drawing Biennale 2019, Drawing Room, London; Hyper Mesh, Assembly Point, London, 2019; Arc. Herrick Gallery, London, 2018; The Creatures, Chalton Gallery, London, 2018; Chumming, The Pipe Factory (part of GI Festival), Glasgow, 2018; Bearing Liability, Strange Cargo Gallery, Folkestone, 2017, RA Schools Show 2017 Royal Academy Schools, London; Gender, Identity and Material, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2017, MONO7, Courtyard Theatre, London, 2017, Oral Rinse 2, Waterloo Action Centre, London, 2016; Dark Water, Southwark Park Galleries, London, 2016, A COOL DRINK TO CHEEK, Plazaplaza, London, 2014. Parali was one of the recipients of the Studiomakers Prize, by Outset and Tiffany and Co, 2017.

Sam Austen, (b. 1986, London, UK. Lives and works in London) is a graduate of the Royal Academy schools and Chelsea College of Art & Design.
Selected solo exhibitions include, Hologram Burnt On To The Retina, Farbvision, Berlin, 2018; Run!! For The Present, Deptford X, London, 2017; Such Animals, Paradise Row, London, 2014; A Cool Drink To Cheek, Plaza Plaza, London (2014); and Angry Film, The Sunday Painter, London, 2010.
Selected group exhibitions include: Drawing Biennale 2021, Drawing Room, London; IMAGE DRUM, Royal Academy, London. 2019, Out of Eye, Laure Genillard, London, 2019, New Work II: Material, Cob Gallery, London, 2018, CHUMMING, The Pipe Factory, Glasgow,, 2018, Like Honey From A Weed, Cass Sculpture Foundation, West Sussex, 2017; Premiums Interim Projects, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK, 2016; Tomb, Shrine, Survey-marker, Spare part, Enclave, London, 2014; Dreamland, Garis and Hahn, New York, 2014; Open Heart Surgey, The Moving Museum, London, 2013; The Instability of the Image, Paradise Row, London 2013; Young London, V22, London, 2012;  Seconds, The Sunday Painter, London, 2011.