COMMA 13 / 14: Irina Korina and Vicky Wright

COMMA 13 Irina Korina

Korina is a sculptor and installation artist whose work very much reflects her original training as a scenographer: her large-scale installations recall theatrical sets, creating all-encompassing spaces that convey a very strong sense of narrative on the edge between reality and fiction. Yet these narratives are not based on any specific storyline, they are formed through the interplay of textures, materials and scale. Through her use of found objects, especially materials imbued with strong cultural references (furniture, printed textiles, clothing etc), she engages with social and political ideas, particularly associated with the Russian context, yet with a potentially more global resonance.

For Bloomberg SPACE she has created a towering central sculpture in the semi-darkened front gallery, with the room lit by the sculpture itself. In turns resembling a jellyfish, Kraken, spaceship or enchanted tree, the work attempts to give voice to the former USSR's most voiceless – the silent underclass of economic migrants from impoverished former Soviet republics known as 'gastarbaitery' – who play a crucial role in Russia's economic development.

COMMA 14 Vicky Wright

Vicky Wright presents a series of new paintings, which draw upon her ongoing concerns with the paradoxical nature of portraiture, politics and patronage.

The paintings, which continue on from her original Extraction series, hint at a hidden history by painting on the reverse of the frame. The works will traverse the rear gallery appearing as windows into the machine or portraits of desire, their gaze looking out covetously. At the epicentre of the gallery will stand a large 'totem' enclosing an illuminated piece of coal, a symbolic source of energy - the prize.

The paintings, simply entitled The Guardians appear as an exploration of portraiture and what might be revealed on the back of such portraits. The history of genre painting generally, especially portraiture, tends to immortalise the captains of industry who have commissioned it. As Wright explains, 'The darker side to this is the extraction of wealth at the price of human misery, whether its coal mining in the North or the extraction of minerals in Africa - they all reveal an exploitative transaction. In a sense, the people who aren't immortalised are the ones who are the exploited'.

COMMA 13 Irina Korina
COMMA 14 Vicky Wright