OCTA III at AG

Recent times are characterized by an ever faster-growing number of entangled structures and systems. Connections and relationships are becoming more complex, which makes them even more difficult to understand. While confusion is created, at the same time our environment gives us the feeling that everything is already decided, and that there is little space for playfulness, discovery, or experimentation. Physical interaction is no longer self- evident. The OCTA-collective reflects on these contemporary feelings with an installation of a maze. By using materials and objects found in the urban context and on construction sites, the collective refers to the continuously transformative character of the structures of our social life. OCTA III brings together eight makers from Utrecht and Amsterdam, including three alumni HKU Product Design and one from HKU Fine Art and Design in Education. The participants break through the boundaries of their individual practice by adopting a collective attitude and creating joint work for exhibitions in both cities of origin. They reflected on and responded to each other’s work and the architecture of AG. For OCTA III the participating artists broke through the boundaries of their individual practice by adopting a collective attitude. The works in the exhibition were created especially for the occasion and were created in varying degrees of collaboration, often by two or more artists. Because of this, we chose not to link the exhibited works to specific names. UTRECHT Tom Putman While studying, decomposing and reforming objects from daily life, Tom Putman create sculptures by merging different elements that are inspired by mass production and medieval craftsmanship. Putman constructs sculptural objects through a wide range of techniques, from designing elements to manufacturing them, through the use digital techniques such as laser cutting, CNC milling and 3D printing. Anna Reerds Anna Reerds’ work is about the relationship between us, humans, and the spaces we construct and occupy. By combining photography, scale models and film, she plays with reality and creates a world that on one hand reminds us of ours, but on the other hand, looks strange and absurd. Bart Schalekamp Bart Schalekamp aims to challenge mental playfulness in his work. Inspired by unpredictable movements combined with unusual crafts, Bart creates work that responds to the space. With this, he seeks to stimulate the viewer to understand how materials come together and how the elementary processes around us work. Samantha Vlaming In Samantha Vlaming’s installations, sculptures and videos, playful research and fragments of her surroundings meet. With intuitive combinations of self-made materials and existing objects, the tragicomic aspect of everyday life comes to light. AMSTERDAM Niels Albers Niels Albers is engaged in research into the relationship between humans and animals and other life forms, with a genuine concern for the impact of the human species on our planet's ecosystem. All this is based on a fascination with origins, games, maps and routes. Anthropocentric concerns mixed with an architectural fetish. Bas Burghard Bas Burghard's sculptures and installations often begin with a change of perspective. This new viewing point may come from another place, object or from a different timeframe. By applying this new perspective to the subject, Burghard creates nihilistic and transparent sculptures and installations, but not free of romanticism. Janina Frye Janina Frye’s work presents a concept of the human — a transformative system with connections, overlaps and entanglements— linking the corporeal body to the outside world. Contesting the Western world’s inherited view of the human as a discrete and singular being, through sculpture and installation she draws on critical frameworks of queer ecology, posthumanism and post-war formalism to address how sculpture can trouble persistent cultural dualisms. Sachi Miyachi Sachi Miyachi’s work consists mainly of three-dimensional installations and site-specific interventions. She sculpts the here-and-now. She is inspired by the paradoxes and antagonisms between nature, humans and technology, as well as how their relationships form spatial delimitations that shape public space. Myachi researches and artistically translates our collective efforts to handle both the internal and external world. Special thanks to: Tom Burghard Peter van Dijk Jan-Pieter Karper Imke Sikkema Chloé Pérès-Labourdette Lennart de Neef Jorn Tuijnman Annebel Vernooij Loïs Overbosch Previous OCTA members With the kind support of gemeente Utrecht