During Berlin Art Week 2021 from 10.09.2021 to 19.09.2021
Opening Friday 10.09.2021, 5 pm - 9 pm.
Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays open from 3 pm - 7 pm.
The duo show “A Bird in the Grass is Worth a Thousand Hearts” sees Retramp re-vamped into a laboratory of play and possibility in a reunion. Caitlin Hespe and Ida Lawrence are two artists who have been working apart from each other (most recently in Budapest and Berlin, respectively), though also in close contact. Through telepathic communication (or just regular phone contact, we cannot be sure) motifs merge and collide, and thematic encounters occur. In her drawings and paintings, Caitlin Hespe pairs images in surprising combinations through a new logic and sensibility.
She makes leaps and links between associations and language and plays with the page as a space of illusions. Ida Lawrence’s canvases tell stories of mishaps, (mis)understanding and (dis)connection. Set between Germany, Indonesia, and Australia — her homes at different Times — her narrative paintings reflect recent observations, delve into distant memories, and chart her attempts to make sense of the world.
The title of the exhibition A Bird in the Grass is Worth a Thousand Hearts is a conflation of (at least) four English language proverbs, each representing a sentiment or lesson for a specific moment.
One values that which is close in the present, another that absence can grow desire, one says things in the distance are seen with a skewed perspective, another that images and words can not really equate. Holding each of these ‘wisdoms’ could be confusing, maybe nonsensical, or perhaps the confused proverb is a wisdom in itself?
In the same way, this exhibition developed in situ connects threads of the artist's thoughts, anecdotes, messages and mark-making sensibility into a new conversation within the gallery space.
Curated by Katia Hermann.
Artist Bios
Caitlin Hespe
caitlinhespe.com
instagram.com/freiche.hat
Caitlin Hespe (b. 1989, Sydney, Australia) is a visual artist whose research-based installation practice includes drawing and painting. She graduated from the National Art School (Australia), with a Master of Fine Art (Drawing) in 2018. She works individually, and as half of a collaborative duo with Emilie Syme-Lamont. In 2019 Caitlin was an artist-in-residence in Paris at La Cité des Arts International awarded through the National Art School, later a program assistant for the Budapest Art Residency (BARTR). She has shown works in collaboration through PINCE Projects in Budapest in 2021, and with solo shows at The Wating Room Projects and Articulate Project Space in Sydney.
She is currently based in Budapest, Hungary.
Ida Lawrence
idalawrence.info
instagram.com/idalawrencee
Ida Lawrence (b. 1988, Sydney, Australia) is a visual artist with a special interest in storytelling. Her narrative paintings combine text and images, fact and fiction, and drawings from research, observations and personal experiences. Painting is for her a way of making sense of the world and usually approached with a sense of play and humor and is particularly interested in how the visual and ‘abstract’ language of painting can be a form of storytelling in itself.
In Australia, Ida graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School in 2009 and received First Class Honours at Sydney College of the Arts in 2014. In 2009 she co-founded MILS gallery, an artist-run project space in Sydney, then moved to Indonesia where she studied dance at the Indonesian Arts Insitute, Yogyakarta. Since 2017, Ida has been a member of Woven Kolektif.
She lives and works in Berlin since 2019.