Our Teeth are Reefs
Jungwon Jay Hur, Lucien Anderson, Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton, Rhett Leinster
22.03.2024–14.04.2024


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Slugtown are pleased to present Our Teeth are Reefs, an off-site group exhibition at Collective Ending, London, featuring artists Lucien Anderson, Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton, Jungwon Jay Hur and Rhett Leinster.

Trace fossils are geological records of activity of a past life. Nest, burrows, and tracks are preserved in sedimentary rock, providing a glimpse into the behaviours of an ancient life – rather than the physical petrified remains of an organism. In Underland, Robert Macfarlane’s 2019 book, he writes “We all carry trace fossils within us…Handwriting on an envelope; the wear on a wooden step left by footfall; the memory of a familiar gesture by someone gone, repeated so often it has worn its own groove in both air and mind; these are trace fossils too.” In Our Teeth are Reefs, the exhibition brings together a selection of artists with singular approaches to ideas of value, excavation and belonging in a place, but with shared interest into the slippery property of materials.

Jungwon Jay Hur creates intimate oil paintings on board. Korean and Western folk music, tales, and fables weave their way into her works, intertwined with autobiographical experience. Multiple images and references accumulate on the paintings surface, before being wiped away and redrawn – the stained residue left behind both a marker for loss, and the foundational structure for new stories and meanings.

Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton’s works in sculpture, photography, and writing, utilising the transformative properties of materials and language. Her practice is grounded in a feminist critique of land, bodies, and desires through the lens of circular time. Her work explores how meaning can dissolve into making and evoke feeling.

Rhett Leinster’s uncanny and ambiguous compositions develop out of an intrigue with incidental, often screen-based images, and a holistic painting practice. For example, Disavowal is part of a series of work that printed specific images from a digital repository onto handmade paper as base formats to instigate further re-working in paint mediums. By equating the paint, print and support Rhett slows the images’ instantaneous reading and explores apprehension about the tendency to interpret images as orderly arrangements. Working against the codified way contemporary image culture operates, this selection of work employs qualities of marks derived from mistakes, indecision, and incidental information; qualities often ignored by such operations, therefore drawing-out human and authentic affectations of images.

Lucien Anderson’s works sit as artefacts developed from a personal narrative. Everydayness, belonging and transience excite him, and he often returns to the evocative motif of houses and boats. His works seesaw between purposeful and whimsical; any implication of function undermined by an arbitrary playfulness. The artist rejects new material, instead scavenging from what he has around him, and embracing the inherent properties of the material he works with.

Lucien Anderson (b. 1992, Huddersfield, UK) lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne. He recieved his BA in Fine Art at Newcastle Univeristy in 2016. Anderson has completed residencies at Contemporary Fire, Tuscany, 2023; The Museum of Loss and Renewal, Collemacchia, 2023; and Allenheads Contemporary Arts, Northumberland, 2016 and 2018. Recent exhibitions include: Memory Into Landscape, Elysium Gallery, Swansea, 2022; Near and Elsewhere, No 20 Arts, London, 2022; AFTER THE FLOOD, Blyth, 2022; Friends With Benefits, London, 2021; EKO 8 – International Triennial of Art and Environment, Maribor, 2021.

Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton (b.1991, Bolton, UK) lives and works between London and Manchester. She is a graduate of the Royal Academy Schools programme (2018-2022) and Manchester School of Art (2013-2016). Recent exhibitions include: Openings, Recent Activity, Birmingham, 2024; Timescapes, Schtager & Sch, London, 2023; Vanitas, NightCafe, London, 2023; Alone Time, Union Pacific, London, 2023; Babel, Spazio Musa, Turin, 2023; Ancient Vessels, APT Gallery, London, 2022; Photocopies II, Recent Activity Birmingham, 2022; Everything Must Go!, Assembly Point, London, 2019; Sensitive Matter, Bridget Riley Studios, London, 2019; LANDGRAB, The Shop, Sadie Coles HQ, London, 2019; State of The Arts, Selfridges, Manchester, 2019.

Jungwon Jay Hur (b.1996, Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in London. She has a Masters from Slade School of Art (2020-22), and studied at Wimbledon College of Art before that (2016-19). Recent exhibitions include: Flee as a bird to your mountain, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China, 2024(solo); Woman from the Bird Egg, Incubator, London, 2023 (solo); Voyager I, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China, 2023; Reflection, Blanco Gallery, London, 2022; Why Don’t You Dance?, ASC Gallery, London, 2022; Hearth, Lokal, Helsinki, Finland, 2021

Rhett Leinster (b.1990, Kent, UK) lives and works in Glasgow. He received his BA in Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art in 2013. Recent exhibitions include: Moderato Cantabile, Stoppenbach & Delestre, London, 2022; Prestwick II, New Glasgow Society, Glasgow, 2022; Armour, 20 Albert Road, curated by Cento, Glasgow, 2022; Graven Images, New Glasgow Society, Glasgow, 2019.