Exhibition Archive

Fabrica worked with leading Finnish artist Kaarina Kaikkonen in collaboration with Brighton Festival to bring two major new site-specific works to Brighton and Hove, one piece for the gallery and the other at The Clock Tower in the city centre. Working primarily in public and easily accessible places, Kaarina Kaikkonen uses simple, every day objects [...]

The Beautiful Horizon, No Olho da Rua is an acclaimed project, documenting a long-term collaboration between young people living on the streets of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and artists Julian Germain, Patricia Azevedo and Murilo Godoy. The project demonstrates how photography has been used to offer a platform to the socially and economically excluded, enabling them [...]

Fabrica was delighted to work with Annemarie O’Sullivan, a UK basket maker to present Cluster, a new site-specific commission for the gallery. A basket maker whose work ranges from small-scale domestic objects through to larger-scale woven forms, O’Sullivan mainly makes her constructions outdoors. From her base in Lewes, East Sussex, she draws inspiration from the [...]

I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another is an intimate portrait of poet, painter and philosopher Etel Adnan. Central to the film, made largely in her Paris apartment, is a reading of extracts from her recently published poem The Sea. The sound of Adnan’s voice and the quiet but ever present ambient noise [...]

Gathering was an exhibition of two film works by London-based artist Melanie Manchot. Celebration (Cyprus Street) is inspired by the tradition of street parties in London’s East End and was developed over a period of six months with the involvement of residents of Cyprus Street in Bethnal Green. Reminiscent of newsreel footage and Edwardian event [...]

Stéphane Cauchy uses simple mechanical devices which often take the form of improbable laboratory experiments. Cascade is a kinetic sculpture in which nine buckets, interconnected by a pulley system, are suspended from the roof above a large pool. Water is pumped into each bucket until, at a critical point, it tips and empties, releasing its [...]

Looking back over 2012 and once again we’re astonished by the range of activity and achievements of the year. Sometimes when you’re in the thick of it, making things happen, you don’t get a chance to take a breath, to step back and see the wider picture. I placed the speakers around the room in [...]

“I have a very strong collecting gene” Martin Parr is considered to be one of the most successful and accessible artists of his generation. A photographer, collector, editor and exhibition maker, he offers us his unique view of the modern world by reflecting its ambiguities. He describes his practise as a form of collecting , [...]

“I am in search of the tipping point, the moment of almost falling over.” – Frederic Guerts A Fine Line by Frederic Geurts is a structure of delicate steel pylons that elevate a rising white curve from one end of the gallery to the other. It is a frozen trajectory, a gesture, a line drawn [...]

“We get an intimation of our own mortality from things like this”. – Brian Eno During the 2010 Brighton Festival, Fabrica played host to Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings, a slowly and constantly changing light installation displayed by a composition of high definition video screens. Originally conceived in 2006, the piece was reminiscent of a [...]

“How is it that an individual’s smile can lift the atmosphere of a room or that we find ourselves ‘catching’ another’s mood from a display of anger, fear or disgust?” For the ninth in a series of ten artistic and scientific experiments at Fabrica, Tina Gonsalves and her team created Chameleon. For this installation, the [...]

“I want to humanise time, I want to bring a person into an environment and present to them [unknown] places that are imbued with meaning”. – John Grade In his first UK exhibition, John Grade created The Elephant Bed, a monolithic interpretation of the life-cycle of the coccolithophore. Billions of these invisible algae congregate just [...]

“All those beautiful young bodies, decapitated; all those tumbling heads and bloody, spurting necks”. – Salman Rushdie For the 2009 Brighton Festival, Fabrica worked alongside several other venues across Brighton and Sussex to show a total of seven pieces of work by artist and Guest Artistic Director of the festival, Anish Kapoor. Two works were [...]

“The degree of conscience […] is the first step to get a distance, to not be involved, to ask why, where, who?” – Thomas Hirschhorn For the 2008 Brighton Photo Biennial, Fabrica presented the world premiere of The Incommensurable Banner, a new work by Thomas Hirschhorn. This exhibition was one of a series across the [...]

“When I began my work I often used 3D spaces to create work that existed in the virtual world… gradually I thought it was more interesting to make objects or sculptures that evoked these digital spaces without any intervention of digital technology”. – Vincent Maugher The Undercroft was a newly commissioned sculpture designed to take [...]

“The piece is about an effect of peoples’ lives having been involved with, in any way at all, the phenomena of serial killing. Particularly when a woman has been involved”. – Carole Hayman In the early twentieth century Dr Edmond Locard, a pioneer of forensic science, proposed his ‘exchange principle’. His idea was that whenever [...]

“We’ve always worked with the moving image. In these works we put the viewers in a first person experience and we take them through some journey. We are interested in the human perception of the landscape, whether manmade or natural landscape, and the things that we don’t hear or experience.” – Ruth Jarman Semiconductor (UK [...]

“The Land of Cockaigne is a medieval idea of paradise in which food is ever plentiful, rivers run with alcohol, roasted chickens fly through the air, and eggs walk on legs offering themselves up to be eaten.” – Rachel Reupke In one continuous camera movement, Land of Cockaigne represented a god’s eye view of the [...]

“Twilight zones, where simple pinpricks of light encourage you to dwell on whole worlds of other possibilities.” Come in. Out of the sunshine. Out of the glare. Let your eyes adjust to the partial light inside Dominique De Beir’s installation, La Route Blanche. 
 
In the gallery, cardboard boxes and fruit crates were used to [...]

See beyond the familiarity of everyday materials and be transported into the realm of the magical… Beneath the Stride of Giants was a monumental boat, created by sculptor Brian Griffiths from a collection of second hand wooden furniture. Griffiths’ sculpture depends on our will to imagine, to see beyond the familiarity of his everyday materials [...]

“Running Stitch sews together our routes to work, to the sea, and our walks for exercise or shopping with the meandering and more personal journeys we might take within the fabric of the city.” Running Stitch was a 25sq/m tapestry map, created live in the gallery over four weeks, that charted visitors’ daily journeys through [...]

“He positioned himself for the best possible image. He waited 20 minutes. He was hoping the vulture would spread its wings. But it did not. He took his photographs. And chased the bird away. He watched as the little girl resumed her struggle. He sat under a tree and lit a cigarette. Talked to God. [...]

“The idea that nature can cope on its own should not be encouraged – an autonomous nature would only lead to disaster and chaos, not just for us, but for nature itself.” – Jacques Nimki Jacques Nimki’s artistic practice involves him in collecting, drawing, and pressing plants. In his previous work he has catalogued specimens [...]

‘The pattern, form and intricacies of lace resonate deeply as a metaphor for our relationship to the fabric of our cities … social connections … and our common heritage.’ – Catherine Bertola Place, history and how the past impacts upon the present are the core themes of Catherine Bertola’s artistic practice. Previous works have responded [...]

“In [Viola's] work we glimpse mystery through the ordinary and everyday, the transcendent through the imminent…a profound meditation on life and being itself” Originally commissioned for Durham Cathedral by the Chaplaincy to the Arts & Recreation in North East England in 1996, The Messenger has a resonating presence in Fabrica, a deconsacrated Regency Church in [...]