On the occasion of miart 2024, Belmacz spotlights the practices of two artists: Coco Crampton and Charlott Weise

Coco Crampton

Coco’s artworks emerge from imagined narratives; fictions that toy with the formalities of historical design.

Taken from the historical modes of embellishment, often those used within domestic spaces, Coco’s works perform with a double face; not deviously deceptive, but rather, playfully proclaiming more than their first appearance.

Charlott Weise

Reflecting upon how femininity is performed across a range of cultural fields, from historical figurative painting to literature and the mainstream media, Charlott Weise’s paintings can be seen as a form of intuitive image-based writing. In her paintings, interior worlds unfold as rich narrative mise-en-scène; female archetypes find themselves slipping between, in and out of, thick plotlines both banal and bombastic.

booth text

Penned in 1939, Virginia Woolf’s autobiographical essay ‘A Sketch of the Past’ puts forward the idea that the self is an everchanging thing — an interweaving of fragments, pasts and presences. Written in a fragmentary nature itself, the text performs, much like a being, in a relational manner, looping memories into a philosophical narration; in a way that defies the artificial pizzazz of modern life. As with her literary work, Woolf’s philosophical Sketch foregrounds the importance of life’s small moments to the conditions of our present — our presence. Specifically, the sensory occurrences — the sights and sounds and smells — from our past which suddenly reappear in the present so as to render our now “a thousand times deeper” than any smooth prepositioning. These shocking “moments of being” make reality unreal, critically affording us an opportunity to sense the full relationality of life; thereby allowing us to think beyond the “background rods” which condition our social selves.

Coco Crampton and Charlott Weise’s artistic outlooks can be seen to sit akin to Woolf’s thinking. Respectively, across sculpture and painting, Crampton and Weise draw upon the past, the overlooked and undervalued textures which weave to form a being, re-articulating these to suspend the monotonous flows of modern life. As something of a conversation across media, this dual presentation celebrates the allusive nature of each artist’s practice.

Coco Crampton’s practice stems from an interest in the design icons of the long 20^th century. Breathing new life into otherwise antiquated forms, Crampton co-opts craft traditions to create sculptural works which playfully twist the objective stylings of domestic life. Belmacz’s presentation at miart 2024, spotlights Crampton’s ceramic practice; a range of deliquescent neon chandeliers float aside a shelf of ‘functionless’ pots. United by both their clay bodies and the visuality of their long protrusions, these works suspend expected functions, transforming otherwise utilitarian matter into animate bodies — lampshades become lithe jellyfish-like forms whilst ceramic teapots become woodland creatures: squirrels, owls, and the like. Sitting with Crampton’s associative works, the mind drifts, sensorial memories of sunny days by seashores and ample walks through wooded paths appear in our minds, demonstrating how beneath the cotton wool of domestic life lies a hidden pattern; how, to quote Woolf, “the whole world is a work of art” and how we are parts of this everchanging artwork: “we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.” Performing anew, Crampton’s hand-crafted artworks allow us to glimmer — to find joy in — the relationality of life.

Reflecting upon how femininity is performed across a range of cultural fields — from historical figurative painting to literature and the mainstream media — Charlott Weise’s paintings can be seen as forms of intuitive image-based writing. In these images, interior worlds unfold as rich narrative mise-en-scène; female archetypes find themselves slipping between, in and out of, thick plotlines both banal and bombastic. Finding inspiration in Clarice Lispector’s novel The Passion according to G.H., the five-panel frieze, Herself In Passage (2020), presented at miart reads as an absurdist layering of diaristic entries — as literary fragments cut from an existence ­— which weave together to render the temporal nature of being; or at least to demonstrate how a being is an innately liquidus thing, a washing together of emotive states beyond the didact and the logistically discernible. For Weise the intuitive process of applying oil to canvas holds a capacity to communicate sensory experiences which words alone cannot embody. Echoing the attentiveness of Lispector’s prose, Weise’s narrative is a mighty record of an anomalous life — be this the life of Lispector’s protagonist, Weise’s own or a subconscious weaving of the two. Human in scale, the multivalent scenes of Herself In Passage not only envelop us within the throes of a slippery storyline but arouse a subjective encounter, one wholly conjured through the poetic action of putting paint to canvas.

Much like Woolf’s Sketch, Crampton and Weise’s respective artworks give a new depth to reality. By drawing upon the small, extra-sensorial, moments that interweave to form a being their artworks suspend the sheeny frames that enclose an existence. In turn they afford us an opportunity to think physically about the role of objects and bodies within the plays of everyday life. Indeed, they allow us to think what these plays could be: acting as sketches for the future.

—Toby Üpson, March 2024

Artist biographies

Coco Crampton (b.1983, London, UK), studied at Norwich School of Art and Design before graduating from the Royal Academy Schools in 2014.

Select exhibitions include: Contested Bodies, Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds, UK (2023-24); Women of the ‘20’s, Belmacz, London (2023); RA Summer Exhibition 2023, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2023); Like there is hope and I can dream of another world, Hauser & Wirth with Hospital Rooms, London, UK (2022); Domestic Wears, Belmacz, London (2020-2); Tender Touches, AMP Gallery, London (2019); Estragon, Belmacz, London (2019); The Artist Practitioner, The Shoe Factory, Norwich (2018); The Ghosts are in the House, Chopping Block Gallery, London (2018); If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Roaming Projects, London (2018), Alpenglühen: 100 years of Ettore Sottsass Jr, Belmacz, London (2017); Bowers: from form to public, Belmacz, London (2016); All Over, Studio_Leigh, London (2016); Looking At People, Looking At Art, Division of Labour, London (2016); Kingly Things Chandelier Projects, London (2015); Handles on Romance & Other Girls also Common Tongue, The Minories Galleries, Colchester (2015); Cassius Clay, Marcelle Joseph Projects, London (2014); Protected Space, two-person exhibition with Jonathan Baldock, Belmacz Gallery, London (2014); A Thing is a Thing is a Thing, The Minories Galleries, Colchester (2012); Slipped, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2012); Bonne Bouche, The Cut, Suffolk (2010); A Skvader, Norwich Castle Museum, Norwich (2009); Views from Afar, Vulpes Vulpes, London (2009); Kunstwerk Bazaar, OUTPOST Gallery, Norwich (2008); “18”, Centre Gallery, Berlin (2008); Swing, OUTPOST Gallery, Norwich (2007); WYSIWYG, F.A.I.T. Krakow, Poland (2006).

Coco was shortlisted for the Dorich House Museum Residency in 2020, the Dentons Art Prize S/S 2018 and the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award in 2015. Coco received the Patricia Turner Sculpture Award in 2014 and the Hiscox Scholarship Award in 2013.

Coco lives and works in Devon (UK).

Charlott Weise (b. 1991, Görlitz, Germany), was a participant at De Ateliers (Amsterdam) in 2016. Previously, she studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (Amsterdam), as well as studying under Class of Prof. Christian Macketanz, at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, and the artist Heike Dittrich, in Bautzen (Germany).

Select exhibitions include: For these thoughts we change into pink, Belmacz, London (2023); Shōkakkō, TheMerode, Brussels, Belgium (2023); Kiss my Soul, Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht, The Netherlands (2023); How to Cook a Wolf, two seven two gallery, Toronto, Canada (2023); Mutig Wandeln, Kunsthalle Görlitz, Germany (2023); Tinted Glass, Kunsthalle Münster, Germany (2021); Notes on Wine, hosted by Cascina Gilli, NEVVEN, Castelnuovo Don Bosco, Italy (2021); Koninklijke Prijs voor Vrije Schilderkunst, Koninklijke Palais Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2020); The Annotated Reader, curated by Ryan Gander & Jonathan P. Watts, Quartz Studios, Torino, Italy (2020); Vordemberge-Gildewart Award, GEM, Den Haag, The Netherlands (2020); Schulz & Weise, a duo exhibition with Franziska Schulz, W139, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2019); ampersands, W139, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2019); Take me away, A Maior, Viseu, Portugal (2018); He at Sea, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, Vijfhuizen, The Netherlands (2018); The Ashtray Show West, Belmacz, London, UK (2018); If I was your Girlfriend, Belmacz, London, UK (2018); The Yellow Wallpaper, Ginerva Gambino, Cologne, Germany (2017); Johnny Suede, Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels, Belgium (2017); CILADA, A Maior, Viseu, Portugal (2017); 9 PAINTINGS, Galería Formatocomodo, Madrid, Spain (2016); NADA Miami Beach, Galería FORMATOCOMODO, USA (2016); Whiskers by the name of lilacs, Galerie Rianne Groen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2016); SELECTED, Castrum Peregrini, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2014); Entering the Painting, tegenboschvanvreden, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2014).

Awards and grants include: Artist Grant of the Mondriaan Fund (2022); Winner Koninklijke Prijs voor Vrije Schilderkunst (2020); Nominated for Vordemberge-Gildewart Award (2020); Artist Start Grant of the Mondriaan Fund (2017); Praktijkverdieping Postacademische Instellingen Grant of the Mondriaan Fund  (2014-2016); Nominated for Rietveld Academie Award (2014); Nominated for Rietveld Fine Arts Prize (2014); 2. Prize E.O. Plauen Junior Award (2012).

Charlott lives and works between Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and Görlitz (Germany).