​Ophelia Finke and Johnnie Hodgkinson
European, Foreign & Domestic
June 8th - July 7th 2018

Our installation approaches the notion of Zweisamkeit (the state of being two). 
Over the period of two weeks Ophelia und Johnnie will set camp in one of the rooms of the Averard Hotel in the centre of London.
The two friends will be creating a room filling collaborative installation that features individual pieces of each artist as well.
Ophelia’s primitive hut in the right corner of the room, the origin of houses, Vitruvus’ Urhütte, depicts the relationship between human and nature, highlighting the anarchic vibes of a hostel, it stands for shelter.
For a stranger coming into a foreign city and staying at a hotel, the hut offers a place of intimacy, the spirit of the house. 
How culture and its associated symbols are embodied and carried are brought to the forefront in Johnnie erratic use of materials, ranging from terra-cotta and marble dust to polystyrene blocks and balls. A sentiment of surplus impulses and Oedipal longing are used in Johnnie’s work to create a heightened sense of alienation.
The hotel is in ruins, but the idea survived: temporary refuge, comforting you.
Amongst variable kinds of absence, this denotes a posterior kind. The absence of something after it has happened. In occupying the space with a childlike nostalgia for a friends sleepover, Ophelia and Lincoln invert this sense of absence. 
Two of Ophelia’s signature bikes are parked in the back of the room. 
It’s the end of a long distant but easy ride. 
Bike and hut are traveling and arrival, the stay at the hotel is not forever. 
We are time travellers. Travellers through time and space, with the bike being time and the hut and terra-cotta blocks space.


 
Ophelia Finke was born in Germany; she lives between London and Berlin.
Ophelia graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2014.
Exhibitions of her work include Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA (London, UK, 2013), Spike Island (Bristol, UK, 2013), Free Time (duo-show with Charlie Billingham), Emalin, (Zuoz, Switzerland, 2014) Studio Leigh (London, UK, 2015), Scout (curated by Grear Patterson)(Alabama, USA, 2016) and Crib (duo-show with Yves Scherer) Honolulu (Zurich, Switzerland, 2016), Maverick (March, Brandenburg, Germany, 2017)
 
 
Johnnie Hodgkinson was born in the United Kingdom; he lives and works in London.
Johnnie graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2017.
Exhibitions of his work include Sprezzatura (Paris, France, 2013) and ‘How I Killed My Father And…’(London, UK, 2018)