An object enters stage left, having departed the action, and is filed and stored awaiting further use.

Twelve Around One is pleased to present Prop)er, a solo exhibition by Christopher Shilling. The exhibition runs from the 7th - 16th September 2012.

Composed of a group of paintings and sculptures, the works in the exhibition are a response to a play written by the artist. The relationship, established by this way of working places one set of works both as the product of and equally in opposition to the text from which they spring. The simulacra between the text and the painted and sculptural works serves as a test of the relative nature of the differing media, wherein they both collectively inform each others character, and yet equally where the greater wealth of information provided by both sets of works serves to limit the space of interpretation on the part of the viewer. The painted and sculptural works being a response to a context created by the artist establishes a situation where the artist sets the nature of his own contingency. Creating a context in which one set of works is guided by another and are given their legitimacy through the precedent of language.

The artworks find parallels with a prop store, where an assembled group of objects awaits activation by a distant, as yet unwritten script. The existence of a script which activates and inspires purpose within the works runs contrary to notions of the tableau vivant and the bringing to life of static objects. This context promotes and tests notions of the universal nature of objecthood, with the interpretive range of an artwork tested against specific aspects of it’s nature as ascribed to them by the play.