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On Land: Malcolm Attryde 17 January – 15 March 2009 An exhibition featuring new works by Medway-based artist Malcolm Attryde. His paintings, collages and constructions use a semi-abstract language of atmosphere, depth and texture, in response to places, landscapes, memories and relationships. For more information about the artist, please visit www.sinter.co.uk. The artist explains... Many of the pieces in this exhibition have their origins in places that I have known from my travels – either real or imagined – and some of the pieces are attempts at creating the feel of those places or some memory of them.The idea of creating a body of works that in some way relates to a sense of place, landscape, environment is something that has intrigued me for quite some time. Although the works are land-based they can also be seen as metaphors for time and for the mind. When I use the term landscape, I am thinking of places, times, climates and the moods that they evoke and of moments of memory too.
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Many of the works have evolved slowly, sometimes over the course of many months, and while not attempting to literally depict locations or elements in the landscape and its relentless transformations, the pieces, in some instances, do resemble earthworks, dried-up river beds and the slow staining of moss, rust, lichen, remains of industry, old, disused and forgotten buildings and the marks of man’s activities.
The pieces included in this exhibition will hopefully trigger a feeling in the viewer that they take you somewhere but this might be somewhere you have never been before, imagine going to or perhaps have a vague recollection of, allowing space for your own imagination and imaginings.
The processes used to create many of these pieces have been a journey through an unknown land in itself, adopting a more intuitive approach rather than my usual, more structured, method of working from notes and sketches, consciously taking a different attitude towards both the materials and the procedures I generally use, allowing the process to determine the direction and eventual outcome of much of the work.
The artist himself
Malcolm Attryde has developed his own individual and enigmatic style. His work takes its inspiration and points of reference from a variety of sources, observations of and responses to the natural world, particularly where there has been some intervention from man, the effects of the passage of time and the elements on the landscape, a fascination with the surface appearance of objects and the juxtaposition and relationship of details and marks inadvertently made by both man and nature.
The works pursue a continuing exploration of the complexity and multiplicity of any one given moment in time and responses to places, landscapes, memories and relationships. Through the use of colour, form, line, pattern and texture, the works are developed into paintings, collages and constructions which form a semi-abstract language of atmospheres, depths and textures.
Drawing on influences from Kurt Schwitters to present day artists Russell Mills and Ian Walton, he uses a diverse range of techniques to construct, manipulate and alter materials and found objects to create a series of provoking canvases, collages and "thought engines” or visual poems.
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The Orchard: Edwina Bridgeman 29 November 2008 - 11 January 2009 This was a bespoke installation of work for Rochester Gallery and Craft Case drawn from The Orchard by Edwina Bridgeman, a large touring exhibition developed and managed by New Brewery Arts. The Orchard is the culmination of more than a year’s work and research by artist Edwina Bridgeman. Central to the exhibition is a large installation re-creating an orchard, containing life-size trees, including a votive tree. This is hung with china objects, felt birds and personal mementos with branches wrapped in wool or covered with cherished curtaining from her aunt’s house. Smaller pieces focus on the imagery, magic, songs and stories related to apple trees. As well as relating directly to North Kent's fruit-growing and harvesting traditions, the exhibition also reflected a new national wave of interest in self-sufficiency, sustainability, local home-grown or home-reared produce and the curative effect of nature and stillness. Visitors had a chance to make their own contribution to the exhibition. Inspired by what they had seen and by their memories of apples and orchards, they could sit at a battered old table and write or draw their stories. Find out more at www.newbreweryarts.org.uk.
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Size Matters: 62 Group 27 September - 23 November 2008 An exhibition of new textile work from members of the 62 Group was created in response to the title Size Matters. This title was chosen by the group's committee to prompt an exploration of the relevance and diversity of scale in contemporary textile practice. Individual submissions from national and international members were chosen by a panel of experts in August 2008. The resulting pieces were on display at Rochester Art Gallery and Craft Case. The 62 Group was established in 1962 by a group of embroidery students. Since then its membership and remit has expanded to include all aspects of international textile art.
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The group exists to:
- promote textile art in major national and international venues;
- provide facilities for members to exhibit and sell their work;
- create opportunities for the growth and exchange of ideas;
- encourage international links with other textile groups;
- ensure professional commitment while encouraging the exploration of new directions and
- promote and encourage greater awareness of textile art through education.
Find out more at www.62group.org.uk.
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Robert Cooper and Stella Harding: Material Difference 26 July - 21 September 2008 Robert Cooper and Stella Harding work in different craft disciplines: ceramics and basketry respectively. They share a common interest in transforming basic materials, through the use of colour, pattern and texture, to create one-off pieces which explore the juxtaposition of different aspects of material culture. Robert Cooper is an established ceramicist who has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. He is fascinated by the persistence of artefacts and ideas over time. He often uses found objects, such as pottery shards from the Thames foreshore, which are imbued with a previous life and function, as a starting point for his work. Stella Harding recently completed her training in creative basketry. Like many basket makers, she is excited by the interaction of line, texture, shadow and movement brought into play by the techniques and materials of basketry. She enjoys combining a range of different materials, both natural and synthetic, in her work. Many of the natural materials are collected from the garden or the wild and display a life and energy which are keenly exploited. Stella is particularly inspired by traditionally painted and stencilled baskets, old textiles and the calligraphy of different cultures. Robert and Stella are partners and live together in Catford, South London. Robert works from a studio in Camberwell with a number of other well-known ceramicists and also teaches on several higher education ceramic courses. Stella combines her basket-making practice with work as a gardener at Restoration House, Rochester.
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Dawn Badland: Bird and Bone 17 May - 13 July 2008 This exhibition, by Kent-based artist Dawn Badland, arose from her exploration of the Prentis ornithological collection held by the Guildhall Museum and from her discovery of the Victorian collector’s own book, Birds of Rainham by Walter Prentis. Further research followed, including a trip on the River Medway with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to look at nesting sites on the salt marshes and an inquiry into the species currently associated with the area. The work seeks to provide an insight into the Prentis collection and the Victorian interest in accumulating and displaying birds and eggs. Badland’s imagery, derived both from the Medway landscape and from bird plumage patterns, combines current and past information and can be seen as a documentary process to record new findings. www.dawnbadland.com.
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Krystal Orphanides and Seainin Passi: Woodland Wonderland 9 March - 11 May 2008 Krystal Orphanides produced a range of screen-printed wallpapers and decorative hand-cut wall panels based on the theme of a Woodland Wonderland. Brightly coloured moths and birds flutter across woodland florals. The delicate hand-cut wall panels would complement both public or private interior spaces, used as either a room divider or simply as a grand statement piece. Seainin Passi takes inspiration for her work from the natural world, the multiple in nature: the blade of grass, the pebble on the beach, each the same but different, individually modest but in profusion suggesting a sublime, omnipotent life force. She takes her observations into the workshop in the form of an emotional connectivity to the outside world. She deliberately uses modest materials and through the act of making while using simple, low-technology processes, tries to draw out their latent life, their otherness that is revealed in the form of light. By emulating the multiple in nature, she aims to empower the component parts and using movement and light, suggest transformation. Seainin is intrigued by the notion of creating an intimate, tactile experience that can also embody characteristics of an installation.
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Wendy Daws: Memory 26 January - 24 March 2008 This exhibition, by Medway-based artist Wendy Daws, featured a series of acrylic installations on the subject of memory and narrative told through light and shadow. The viewer was encouraged to study the work carefully, to play detective to discover the stories hidden in the artworks. The continuous memory blanket (a contemporary tapestry) on the wall featured the artist's interrelated personal experiences. Individual episodes are linked by threads - the ties which bind us - illustrating how Wendy perceives a sense of interconnection between the people and events in her life. Although the stories represent Wendy’s life, they have a resonance in all our lives. In contrast, the semi-circular shaped pods embraced the viewers, allowing shadows to fall upon them, drawing them into the narrative process. Artwork demonstrating the development of the memory blanket and a series of contemporary portraits, inspired by Victorian silhouettes, was on display along with Wendy's emergency jewellery kits in the Craft Case room. To view a short film combining time lapse and real time footage that documents the installation of the exhibition, please visit www.spaghettiweston.com/wendydawsmemory.html. For further informationabout the artist, please visit www.wendydaws.co.uk.
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Cleo Mussi: Bring in the Green 1 December 2007 - 13 January 2008 Cleo Mussi is an established mosaic artist who is respected within the applied arts, both nationally and internationally. Originally trained in textiles at Goldsmiths College of Art, her interest in recycled fabrics and her knowledge of pattern, print, weave and stitch translate easily into mosaic. Cleo uses a broad selection of mass-produced, recycled tableware; coloured tiles and handmade tessellating tiles, which are cut and pieced together. Her deconstructed and reconstructed series of works combine inherent patterns and forms from recycled ceramics. These pieces connect tastes, aspirations and desire for ornaments across the classes. They hold cross-cultural references in fashionable design through travel and commerce and represent industrial ceramic history. Chinese ceramic meets Wedgewood, Poole sits next to Japanese porcelain and Staffordshire unites with Homebase to form intricate and humorous works. Cleo is interested in the inherent details, the combinations of marks and glazes, as well as functional forms that can be combined to produce works whose content reflect design styles and fashions within British ceramic history. Her recent work unites a motley collection of abstracted ideas and cropped images. Imagery is gathered, cropped and placed to form ornamental collages and sculptural forms, exploring relationships; life events (birth, marriage, death); mother, father and sibling images. Currently, her ideas are inspired by Indian miniatures, 16th century and early 17th century English portraiture, as well as the applied arts of Mexico and Romanesque frescos. For further information please visit www.mussimosaics.co.uk.
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Greig Burgoyne: Undercurrents 17 March - 13 May 2007 Glasgow-born artist Greig Burgoyne’s paintings examine our complex and contradictory relationship with the coast. We escape to the coastal landscape for leisure and contemplation, yet it is also a place of work and survival with an unremitting, elemental and corrosive force. The man-made structures around Greig's home in Hastings provide a trigger point for his imagination and vision. He wants to convey the emotional states and the experience which the objects and structures found in this shifting landscape speak of. The topography and the redundant structures are brought together in surreal, almost dream-like landscapes, where heavy mechanistic forms take on a life of their own. They are juxtaposed against pebble-strewn shores, sun-streaked skies and wooden fishing boats, poised somewhere between the real and the imagined. Greig graduated from the Royal College of Art, London with an MA in painting. As well as installation projects and curatorial work, he exhibits widely and has work in numerous public and private collections in the UK and abroad. Most recent solo shows include: - Studio 21 Fine Art, Halifax, Canada;
- Insel Galerie, Wiesbaden, Germany;
- Artspace Gallery, London;
- The Scottish Fisheries Museum;
- The Russian State Museum;
- Falmouth Art Gallery Cornwall.
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Jessica Zoob: Towards the Light 20 January - 11 March 2007 Jessica Zoob trained at Central School of Arts and Nottingham University. During her training, she travelled extensively, including a period of research in China. For seven years she worked as a theatre designer under the name Jessica Tyrwhitt. Her credits include work for the Hampstead Theatre, the Royal National Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, York Theatre Royal, The Gate and Greenwich Theatre. She now works exclusively as a painter and regularly exhibits in and around London and Lewes. Her paintings are in private collections worldwide. She creates evocative landscapes in paint, worlds that expand the imagination. They have been described as images to dream into. For further details please visit www.jessicazoob.com.
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Lise Bech: The Lie of the Land 2 December 2006-14 January 2007 Lise Bech lives and works in the southern uplands of Scotland where she grows a wide range of willows for her basket-making. In addition to her cultivated willow beds, the local landscape provides a rich source of other traditional basketry materials and more experimental fibreplants, which are occasionally used for embellishment. Working exclusively with Scottish willow - much of it organically grown, tended and harvested (coppiced) by hand - she weaves traditional as well as contemporary pieces for today's lifestyle with integrity and in a sustainable fashion. For further information please visit www.bechbaskets.net.
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Karin Mori: Reunion 14 October-26 November 2006 Karin Mori's recent work celebrates the directness, simplicity and tactile pleasure of drawing, alongside its capacity for recording complex layers of expression and meaning. Her semi-abstract work is inspired by a range of sources, most notably anatomical and botanical forms, and memories connected to her native Hawaii. Through her working process, she joins diverse imagery and approaches into new hybrids, which seem to reflect or embody the transformative nature of drawing. The contrasts and reconciliations inherent in her approach also appear through the materials and the ways they are used - the velvety black of charcoal plays against the silvery sheen of graphite, and deeply incised hatch marks lie beneath thin washes of ink. The resulting drawings can be experienced on both a sensory and emotional level.
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Brenda Hartill: Golden Sun - Silver Tree 12 August-8 October 2006 Brenda Hartill is best known for her embossed abstract collagraphs and etchings, as well as her collages and mixed media works, the latest using encaustic wax to embed found natural objects, as well as print elements and collage. Her inspiration is the natural forms, erosion and textures of the landscape, and her recent move to Sussex has triggered one of her occasional returns to the figurative, in a series of the winter landscapes. However, her main love is abstracting the essence of the landscape, in richly coloured textured works, often enhanced with silver and gold leaf. For further information please visit www.brendahartill.com.
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Julian Rowe: The Broken Love of Doctor Browne 10 June-6 August 2006 Julian Rowe's installation arises from the artist's fascination with the way that landscape can be read as a document of past human presence and how, beyond the scientific investigations of the archaeologist, the earth contains an accumulation of emotional resonances. Many of the objects that he makes are rusty and fragmented abstractions that seem to have been found or dug up, implying a forgotten function and story. In this installation, he has put them into an ambiguous narrative context - the collection of Doctor Browne. The decayed state of Browne's enigmatic and abandoned collection makes it archaeology twice over.
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Laura McCafferty: A Generation 1 April-28 May 2006 The illustrative and narrative work of Laura McCafferty documents the lives of real life characters in everyday situations. Her screen-printed and individually hand-embroidered textile pieces incorporate fabrics gathered from a broad range of sources – new, old, found, recycled, loved and donated.
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Jo Lawrence: Found 28 January-26 March 2006 An exhibition featuring "human objects" created from discarded everyday domestic items with integrated photographic elements and stop-frame animation films by Jo Lawrence. The process of combining everyday found objects with photographic elements appears to create a link between the real and imagined world. The appropriation of everyday objects re-seen as body parts evoke memories of both playful and darker aspects of childhood toys, theatre and puppetry. All is not quite as it appears: a brush, a crushed teapot or glove becomes a head; whisks or spoons are limbs; a flattened sieve or wallpaper scraper is part body or garment. The use of photographic faces instils an innate identity, with a suggestion of a past, an implied personal history. The figures occupy a borderline world as human objects and are the result of an involuntary preoccupation with a sense of the uncanny. To view a 360 degree panoramic virtual tour of the exhibition, please visit www.spaghettiweston.com/RochesterArtVR.htm.
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