Liverpool artist Leo Fitzmaurice in new Show at Castlefield Gallery

Castlefield Gallery is pleased to present a two-person exhibition with Leo Fitzmaurice and Kim Rugg consisting of both new and existing work. Through the dissecting and re-arranging of mass produced information based material, such as newspapers, brochures, comics and packaging, the artists fragment our visual and cognitive understanding of images and text, and force us to reconsider the familiar from a completely new perspective.

Fitzmaurice’s interest is in the material substance of communication rather than its content. His work comments on a world of ever increasing commercial information with a sense of dysfunctionality, reordering this surfeit of publicity material to construct aesthetic revelations. Rugg, on the other hand, is more selective of content as a cue for her work; sourcing newspaper front pages that feature significant world events, meticulously cutting out each letter, rearranging them in alphabetical order; or cutting postage stamps into tiny shards, rearranging them on the envelope and sending them through the postal system unperturbed, her work is delicately and alluringly subversive.

Manipulating or reducing the objects to their material substance, the artists obliterate their discernable function, undermining or ‘sabotaging’ the original message. Through the use of mundane materials, their work can be seen to reconcile both the dexterity of labour intensive craft with that of cultural, social and political undertones imbuing a sense of playful dissent.

More on the artists

Leo Fitzmaurice: (b. Shropshire, UK) is based in Liverpool. His solo exhibitions have included Post Match, book project, Locus Plus, Durham Literary Festival; You tell me again I’m not interested, Deptford X, London; Detourist, MOT International, London in association with Rogaland kunstsenter Norway, K3 Zurich, General Public Berlin and Royal Standard Liverpool; Sometimes the Things You Touch Come True, Yorkshire Sculpture Park; Stuff Happens, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham; You’ve Grown and Changed in So Many Ways, A Foundation, Liverpool; What use is a sign if you know the way, Harewood House, Leeds and Neat Stuff, Firstsite, Colchester.

His work has also been included extensively in group exhibitions in the UK and on the continent including Things that I don’t do, Flowers East, London; Concerning Material, Collyer Bristow, London; Beyond Pattern, Oriel Newtown; Welcome to Paradise, Art Gene, Barrow; Flyersflagsheepself, Seventeen Gallery, London; In Certain Places, Harris Museum, Preston; Golden Record, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh and ICA, London; Floor Space, Millais Gallery, Southampton; Drawing 200, Drawing Room, London; Paperworld, Transition, London; On Garbage, August Art, London; OFF, Outpost Gallery, Norwich; Conditions of Carriage, (insertspace) Sideshow, Nottingham; Size Matters, Arts Council Touring Show Newcastle, Norwich, London; The Space Between the Sole and the Heel, Globe Gallery, Newcastle; Everything Must Go, Workplace Newcastle; Artfutures 05, Bloomberg Space, London; From a Distance 03, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool; Modernist Carpet, De La War Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea; Perspective, O!
rmeau Baths Gallery, Belfast; Niet Normaal, De Beurs Van Berlag, Amsterdam; Reliquaries Of Empires Dust, Museum Man, Breznitsky Gallery, Berlin; K3 Express, Art Rotterdam; Blickachsen 6, Bad Homberg, Germany; K3 Express, K3 Project Space Zurich; Walk On, Shanghai Biennial; 2 Person Show, Rogoland Kunstsenter Stavanger, Norway; Shrinking Cities, Centre for Contemporary Culture, Bahnhof Halle-Neustadt, Halle; Post No Bills, White Columns, New York; Artist Links, (British Council), Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou, China; On Side, Centro De Artes Visuas, Coimbra, Portugal and Migrant Office Shrinking Cities, Kunst Werke, Berlin.

Forthcoming exhibitions include a two person show with Paul Rooney at Grundy Gallery, Blackpool and the Transformations 3 commission at The Lowry, Salford.

Fitzmaurice has co-organised Further up in the Air, a project in a Liverpool tower block that received international plaudits. He has organised an ongoing itinerant project Detourist originally developed with curator Marie Anne McQuay. Last year he devised a book work with Paul Rooney, Wrongteous which was listed as a Granta book of the year.

Fitzmaurice’s work is included in many public and private collections including, Arts Council Collection, Manchester Art Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Harewood House Leeds. His work has been featured in Frieze Magazine, Art Monthly, Art World, Art Review, Blueprint, Eye and Form.

Kim Rugg: (b. Montreal, Canada) is based in London. She has exhibited widely throughout the UK including the exhibitions Please Remain Calm and The Islanders, Nettie Horn, London; Pattern Recognition, The City Gallery, Leicester; Scope Art Fair with Nettie Horn, London; The Future can wait, The Old Truman Brewery, London; Claydon Heeley Jones Mason, The Glass Mill, short-listed for installation, Battersea, London; Mixed Up Media and Artist of Fame and Promise, Spectrum Gallery; Art News, Three Colts Gallery; Who’s Howie, RCA, London; Art of the Impossible, short-listed for the Centre Prize, The Great Eastern Hotel, London; Everyday Shockers and A Gallery Escape Art-Bar, London.

She has also shown extensively on the continent and USA including Billboard Text Art, Tina B, Prague; Text/ural, OKOK Gallery, Seattle; Don’t Mention the War, PPOW Gallery, New York and Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica; Pulse Miami, Mark Moore Gallery, Miami, Art Chicago, showing with Winkleman Gallery, New York; Pulse New York, Mark Moore Gallery, New York; Art Basel Miami Beach, with Mark Moore Gallery; Year 06 Art Fair, Plus Ultra Gallery, New York; Plus Ultra London, with Winkleman Gallery New York; Ultrasonic International, Mark Moore Gallery; Art News Raid Project Los Angeles

Forthcoming exhibitions include a solo exhibition at Mark Moore Gallery in 2010.

She was the winner of the Royal College of Art Society, Thames and Hudson Prize, the Art Source Davis Langton Award and was shortlisted for the Centre Prize. Her work is also included in a number of collections including The Edinburgh House Collection; The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; The Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, Los Angeles and a number of private collections worldwide.