David Booth's [Ghostpatrol] 'Drift Time' + Lisa Roet's 'Skins'

Hugo Michell Gallery invites you to the first exhibition of the year, David Booth’s [Ghostpatrol] 'Drift Time' + Lisa Roet's 'Skins'

In David Booth’s ‘Drift Time’ we travel through an indeterminate space; a series of memories, premonitions and alternate worlds. Our guiding protagonists are a representation of Booth himself under various guises, and with them they have brought relics of the artists personal effects.

Booth has been an avid collector for much of life. Books, artwork, toys, music, plants and ephemera envelop him in both home and studio. As he works he streams podcasts, documentaries and interviews, audiobooks and lectures. In recent times the ideologies of renowned visionary Patti Smith have struck a chord. Smith advocates for more ‘daydream time’ as a crucial means to entice creative impulse, new ideas, problem solving and self-awareness, and so too does Booth.

As is the case with all of his work, ‘Drift Time’ acts a receptacle of his most treasured items and surrounds, replicated and reinterpreted. In this way, we can approach this series of work as a walk-through of Booth’s mind. We are invited, as Smith suggests, to ‘escape our own reality’ and dream along with Booth, relishing in the familiarities found within the works whilst allowing our thoughts to drift between that which is real and that which is not… yet.

In ‘Skins’ Lisa Roet presents an iconic Chimpanzee bust, three-meters in size, ‘White Ape’ dwarfs the viewer and commands the entire gallery space. Existing as an oversized monument to commemorate the life of an Ape, given dignity and acclaim in death with the status of a high-ranking statesman or famed person. The ape is tinted white, the albino skin reflects the colour of Anglo skin identity.

Accompanying the installation, the exhibition will also feature a range of jewellery. Cast from the skin of an Orangutan and sourced from museums and one of Alfred Wallace's trips for Charles Darwin in the late 1800s. Roet comments “Wearing these pieces: skin on skin, the works reflect upon our relationship with nature and upon the notion of "Skins", so beautifully expressed in Indigenous Australian kinship system determining how people relate to each other.”

Please join us in celebrating these two brilliant exhibitions on the 2nd of February!