Whitechapel Project Space

is proud to present

Becky Beasley’s first UK solo exhibition.

Thru darkly night  by Becky Beasley                    

8 Nov – 30 Nov 2003

‘Thru darkly night explores a dark night of the soul, experienced in the bright light of day. The work imagines a social space not unlike a modern city and entertains its impossible community’

This quote is from the notes of British artist, writer, publisher and book collector Becky Beasley (b. 1975). Thru darkly night runs concurrently with her first European solo exhibition, ‘From the series: Institute of N’, at The Bakery, the project space of Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam. This overlap brings further complexities to way Beasley’s practise is constituted of different, yet parallel activities and a seemingly prolific output. Central to all her work is an ongoing enquiry into the photograph as object and text.

Whereas the ‘Institute of N’ project deals primarily with the paradoxes of interior and exterior space, combining a documentary look with fictional writing, Thru darkly night attempts to explore banal, yet nevertheless mysterious relationships; with the photograph itself, with the objects of the Everyday and , for the first time, with others; albeit in the guise of six loaned artworks which comprise a fantasy collection piece by the artist , entitled ‘PERSONA’. The artist becomes collector, if temporarily. The ego wrestles with the inevitable consequences. Thus the space of Thru darkly night becomes uncomfortably inhabited by things and, vicariously, by others.

To quote from Roos Gortzak, curator at The Bakery, ‘Beasley addresses the question of time: what is worth photographing, what should be remembered in the future?…By choosing the unexpected, undervalued and overlooked, she questions the value of the objective, obsessive archiving of our contemporary society in an attempt to fight amnesia.’