Renie Spoelstra’s prime concern is apathy. It is the hours and days that drift by without being noticed. It is every moment frozen in time so that it is the same as the last. It is what Beckett called “pottering inertia”.

Her overriding desire is that our consciousness should be reduced to a point where we forget everything about the specific moment, and see it as the same as every similar one. Everything is generalised, and anything that marks out one time or place from another, as memorable, or unique, or special in any way, should be forgotten. Memory should be uniform so that any one moment is just like any other moment. Memory should be indefinite; Spoelstra wants each image in our minds to be a substitute for every similar place.

In 2001, she began photographing various areas of Dutch woodland and recreational areas that had no specific characteristics. Each place and each moment is mundane, with nothing particularly recognisable or distinctive about it. Using the photographs and film stills as her starting-point, she then made large-scale charcoal drawings on paper. The practice is labour intensive, and the process is physically challenging; and it offers something different to the immediacy of the photographic process. The charcoal marks on the paper help to build an atmosphere of what she calls greyness, and a sense of pervading and disquieting tension.

This is Renie Spoelstra’s first exhibition in the UK.


Born in the Netherlands in 1974, Spoelstra lives and works in Rotterdam. She has been represented in a number of solo and group exhibitions in Europe, including Soakers, at Museum Booijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Verloren Paradijs, at Stedelijk Museum Schiedam; and Nieuwe Collectie, at Museum Wuyts-Van Campen, in Lier, Belgium. She won Artist of the Year 2008, a national contest in the Netherlands; and was winner of Talent of the Year 2008, organised by Kunstweek. Her work is, consequently, included in a number of public and corporate collections.