Fermata, Cromwell Place, London

Fermata was a group exhibition curated by Encounter at Cromwell Place. The musical term historically refers to a sustained pause within a creative performance, the lingering on a particular note or phrase. The exhibition brings together a group of international artists for whom performative processes of making are vital to their practices. Fermata is a device often used to open up new spaces for reflection, a pause between one gesture concluding and another beginning. Each piece selected for this exhibition can be seen as a punctuation point within an ongoing sequence of production and the decision to stop working in the midst of an evolving idea and suspend a moment of making that enables such dynamic objects to take form and resonate.

“For this exhibition Adam Ball extends his subversion of painterly gesture through his exploration of elemental forces. Water carves the flowing forms of the sculptural reliefs whilst fire chars and burns their wooden edges.”