Sasha Bion | The Work
Statement
Sasha Bion questions the notion of classification by exploring the uncanny of creolisation, through the interaction of conflicting impulses and the idiosyncrasies of a craft practice.
She stitches together materials, locations or generally speaking ‘categories’, to create an alternative that is more than the sum of the items she began with. The needle of her sewing machine bites into the paper, but also binds together fabric and paper. It ‘flattens’ to give shape to hybrids and the wisdom of a third dimension (literally and metaphorically). When Sasha Bion disarticulates garments to sew them back together in a different order, and strengthens the whole by stitching fragments of paper to them, she creates a third material that has a flesh-like quality. The new whole tears apart the ‘right’ side and the ‘common sense’ (defined by the same expression ‘bon sens’ in French), or the very notion of ‘frontier’ (between two materials, between body and garment), in a quest for a ‘substantifique moelle’ (Rabelais).
In Sasha Bion’s work, the weighty materials traditionally associated with sculpture are replaced by a delicate appearance that suggests something more transient, while exploring disproportion in sculptural ‘asymmetrical equilibriums’. Her logic of the absurd, unlikely combined with an expressive quality, possesses an authority belying the lowly status of her materials. Through processes of deconstruction and reassemblage, Sasha Bion offers an unsettling coherence of a disjointed reality, while the intricacies of the sewn thread draw a new cartography, a physical way of mapping.
CV
EDUCATION :
2008
MASTER FINE ART, CENTRAL ST MARTINS, LONDON, UK
2007
B.A HON. FINE ART
BEAUX ARTS, LA REUNION, FRANCE / BILDENDEN KUNSTE, VIENNA, AUSTRIA
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS :
‘Pieces to fit’ curated by Marina tsartsara, Coastal Current festival, Hastings, 2011
‘ Le D2’, Collective exhibition, Reunion Island, FRANCE, 2011
‘Sculpture verbale’, performance, Islington, London, UK 2010
Morley Gallery, London, UK, 2009
'Sight Waves, Sound Waves', Edmonton, London, UK, 2008
Master Degree show, Central St Martins, London, UK, 2008
Collective performance, Bank, London, 2008
“This Constant Cracking of the Surface”, Bargehouse Oxo Tower Wharf, London, 2008
'Art Mart', Kunstler Haus, Vienna, AUSTRIA, 2007
Auto Gallery, Vienna , AUSTRIA, 2006
'Maison Servaux', Regional Funds for Contemporary Art, La Reunion, FRANCE, 2006
PRIZES :
2008
‘THE ARTISTS AND COLLECTORS EXCHANGE’ BURSARY
2006
AHRC (ART AND HUMANITIES COUNCIL) AWARD
2006
THIRD INTERNATIONAL DRAWING COMPETITION, WROCLAW, POLAND
2006
EXCHANGE PROGRAMME WITH THE BILDENDEN KUNSTE, VIENNA, AUSTRIA
RESIDENCY :
Research plateform of the ’Ecole Superieure dess Beaux-Arts de La Réunion, FRANCE, January to April 2011
COLLECTION :
Purchase from the city of Saint Pierre, La Réunion, France