FSL Drawing Redaction

Saturday, March 7, 3-5pm

In this special one-day-only exhibition and live event, the attending audience are invited - under set conditions - to cut and take away a piece of the artist’s drawing for free.

Ten years ago, in April 2016, Matt Ellwood exhibited Frieze Saint Laurent (FSL) here at Melanie Roger Gallery. The exhibition involved drawing every Saint Laurent advert that appeared in the previous year’s issues of Frieze art magazine, with the gallery text from the following page overlaid on top. This conflation brought the two contexts even closer than the flick of a page, locking them together as a subtle provocation about art and commodification.

The creative director of Saint Laurent at that time (and photographer of the images) was Hedi Slimane, who left the fashion house, coincidentally, the same month FSL was exhibited. Slimane subsequently became the creative director at Celine, also leaving that house within three months of Ellwood exhibiting three Celine based drawings here in a group show (Ellwood, Ford, McLaren), in July 2024. Those artworks had ‘blind figure drawing’ over the top, mostly enacted by audiences.

This time around, Matt has drawn the very first Saint Laurent image photographed by Hedi Slimane to appear in Frieze (March 2013, Issue No. 153), as a fitting image to be cut up. Ellwood has also prepared 35 substrates only, and the audience are invited -on a first in, first served basis- to take one and use it as the template for cutting around, and simultaneously sticking on, their piece of the artwork.

Back in 2016, Frieze Saint Laurent also consisted of eight sculptures that were, in effect, ‘soapboxes’ for standing on and enacting a cacophonous spoken recital. Now, in FSL Drawing Redaction, Ellwood extends his functional sculpture practice, by constructing a ramp, the length of the gallery, that one must traverse (much like a model) to get to the drawing, receive a scalpel from the artist and commence their excision.

NOTES:
Craft knife provided.
Adults only.
The artist and Melanie Roger Gallery hold no liability for any injury that may occur during this activity.
The artist and Melanie Roger Gallery reserve the right to decline participation in this event.