Cedric Christie: Oblivious to Your Own Career, Rocket Gallery, exhibition review: ‘Subtle reflections on form and colour’
‘Conceptually eloquent’. Photograph: courtesy Rocket Gallery
Oblivious to Your Own Career is a captivating retrospective of Hackney-based artist Cedric Christie.
Motivated by what he describes as an ‘aesthetic of reduction’, Christie’s work is minimalist in form yet conceptually eloquent.
Gathering together pieces from the past 30 years, this show offers a broad sweep of the artist’s oeuvre, from his early text-based embroidery and screenprints to more recent work that uses found industrial materials such as scaffolding pipes, metal clamps and snooker balls.
Christie trained originally as a welder, and though he has lived in and around Hackney for several decades, his studio is in a commercial metal factory in Dagenham, long home to the British automotive industry.
The show offers a ‘broad sweep of the artist’s ouevre’. Photograph: courtesy Rocket Gallery
Commercial motifs from industry are what immediately jump out in his work, from witty transmogrifications of classic artists to subtle reflections on form and colour.
But what lingers in the mind is the tremendous grace and poise that Christie is able to draw from everyday materials.
Cedric Christie: Oblivious to Your Own Career – Survey Exhibition of Sculpture, 1995-2024 runs until 21 September 2024.
The exhibition is open on Saturdays from 2-6pm at Rocket, 4-6 Sheep Lane, E8 4QS.