Akiko Diegel Boris Dornbusch Trenton Garratt

Starkwhite is committed to showcasing the work of new artists in its annual programme, mostly through solo exhibitions staged in the upstairs galleries. This year the gallery opens with a downstairs group show by Akiko Diegel, Boris Dornbusch and Trenton Garratt, accompanied by a piece of writing by Genevieve Allison.

Akiko Diegel

Opportunity shops often bring back lost memories. They are places that trigger many emotions including nostalgia, longing and generosity. They are crowded with narratives lined up on shelves, hanging on racks, piled into boxes. They surround us with lost personal and cultural stories waiting to be told. Blankets serve not only as protection from our anxiety but are also sign of labour, through their painstaking production, and a physical embodiment of multiple lost histories, through the exchanges and uses they have been put through. In buying blankets from opportunity shops, and transforming them into shopping bags, I am trying to emphasise the sometimes, harsh reality of our rapidly changing world, filled with throw-away culture and disposable mass production, and everyday life.

Boris Dornbusch

I keep coming back to events that reveal the role of the individual in group constellations and our construction as citizens. I'm interested in certain fictions between perceptions and apprehensions of how we understand our individual involvements; the impositions of popular culture, the juggling of references and the organisation of social interconnectivity. I see ideas and observations coming together in different social theatres and the media I use: 'Set-up' for me is a problem and starting point at the same time.

Trenton Garratt

These sculptures use the form of a pile as their structure. Piles, further to being an accumulation of objects, are like residues of events occurring with or without intention: a pile of dirty laundry, a pile of autumn leaves or fresh cut grass, a pile of neglected junk. Piles make me think of procrastination or obsession. They're either results of productivity or idleness, consideration or lack of. In thinking about their structure and the way their form comes about through a sort of falling-into-place, piles seem to illustrate the workings of destiny - the ways things end up. It is in this sense that I regard these as processual sculptures.

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