Primal Scream: A reflexive sound, branding the release of intense feelings, of pure energy. An honest, unfiltered noise; the most basic human sound - if not the first - anxiously awaited to prove life and used in therapeutic settings to solve neurotic pain by returning to this expression of raw emotion. The German prefix ur- here means earliest, original.

The examination of the primal is what connects the two artists in this show: Weon Rhee (based in Seoul, South Korea) and Alasdair McLuckie (based in Melbourne, Australia). Both artists' practice dives into the idea of the origin - of things, of form, of material, of structures, of the world at large. The works in this show begin with small, simple elements and shapes that evolve into complex, aesthetic, interrogatory objects, a result of each artist's individual research.

Artist and designer Weon Rhee's objects originate from his heightened sensitivity to sight and touch; his deeply personal, sensory, and exploratory approach. His PRIMITIVE STRUCTURES series of side tables delve into the cultural, historical, and societal landscapes of his upbringing, drawing inspiration from South Korean dolmen - supposed prehistoric burial sites built from stone, usually shaped like a table. They embody the essence of landscape, preserving cultural and natural narratives. This is also innate to the material he uses: PSL (Parallel Strand Lumber), engineered wood from waste material created by compressing wood strands, a process similar to the formation of sedimentary layers. Holes that remain in between the layers are filled with more wood, a meticulous process creating a dense, unique material that bears witness to the process of its creation and evokes images of geology and botany. WE COME FROM FAR AWAY, a series of camphor wood sculptures with PSL inlays, are reminiscent of crystals embedded on a meteorite’s surface eroding and transform the material and its shape over time. This polyhedral structure, itself made up from straight lines, is an exploration of its primal beauty and reflects humanity’s instinctive nature and its inherent attraction to straight lines.

The research into primal structures and processes is also present in Alasdair McLuckie's bead paintings. It combines small-format, non-objective painting – hybrid forms that are both exotic and familiar – with neo-ethnographic bead work; arrangements of coloured globules, a ritualistic and symbolic building of out of small particles, even mirroring the way we experience most images today, made out pixels controlled by zeroes and ones.

A simple Native American loom in the collection of his amateur anthropologist father was McLuckie’s introduction to the processes of weaving. The usage of a loom places his works into the tradition of the grid, a fundament that serves as an aesthetic platform from which the work grows. The irregular, off-centred forms depicted stand in contrast to the systematic continuity of the bead, turning them into virtual, symbolic figures. The viewer is confronted with sophisticated ethnographic practices of histories, values and structures that challenge the linearity of the canonical narrative and conventions of western art but have also influenced early twentieth century modernism and lead to abstraction.

His work is both ancient and modern without representing space in a way canonical to art history. It doesn’t imitate life, but embodies it physically, as experienced in ancient objects. “McLuckie’s work seeks and finds the rhythms of the natural world, breathing, sleeping, waking, walking, standing still, thinking, doing… one thing living creatively, with constructive order, beside an opposite other.” They are acts of pure, primal creativity, a profession of the sanity of natural processes in turbulent times, whether they are ecological or political.

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Weon Rhee (*1994, South Korea) holds an MA in furniture design and a BA in woodworking and furniture design from Hongik University, Seoul. He has had solo exhibitions at Marunuma Art Park in Saitama, Japan (2024, as Artist in Residence) and at Craft on the hill Gallery in Seoul (2023). His work was included in group exhibitions at Craft Trend Fair, Coex, Seoul, at Paris Design Week Paris, Frieze Seoul Eulji night, at London Craft Week with Mint Gallery, at the Loewe Craft Prize Exhibition at Palais de Tokyo in Paris (all 2024), as well as at London Design Festival with Mint Gallery and Salone Satellite at Fiera Milano (2023), amongst others. He was a Loewe Craft Price finalist in 2024 and has won the Salone Satellite Award as winner of Special Mention in Milan in 2023. His works are placed in collections such as the Salone Satellite Permanent Collection in Milan, Marunuma Art Park in Japan, and Hakyun Academy and Culture Foundation in Seoul.

Alasdair McLuckie (Australia) holds a Diploma in Visual art from RMIT, Melbourne and a BFA in Painting from VCA, Melbourne. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Laree Payne Gallery in Hamilton and SYRUP in Sydney (both 2024), at Murray White Room at Res Artis in Melbourne (2022 and 2020), and Mother’s Tankstation Limited in Dublin (2017). In 2015, he has had a Solo Exhibition with Siegfried Contemporary. Amongst others, his work was shown in group shows SYRUP in Sydney, Res Artis’ in Melbourne and Murray White Room at Lene in Melbourne (2024), Murray White Room at The Hotel Windsor and Temperance Hall in Melbourne. He was finalist of Ramsey Art Prize (2021), the Paul Guest Drawing Prize (2020) and the Libris Awards : The Australian Artists Book Prize (2018) and is recipient of the Dr. David & Margery Edwards Trust and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust(2015), the Qantas SOYA Visual Art Award (2013) and the Art & Australia/Credit Suisse Private Banking Contemporary Art Award, as well as the Australia Council New Work Grant (both 2012). His work is included in major private collections. Public collections include Art Gallery NSW, The National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Old and New Art and Monash University Museum of Art. He is represented by Murray White Room in Melbourne.

Primal Scream - Urschrei