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Past exhibitions at Rochester Art Gallery and Craft Case
Passing Reflections - Rosie James
10 February - 13 April 2012
The exhibition brings together works by textile
artist Rosie James, ceramics and glass by Andrea Walsh and fused
textiles in glass by Alison Lowry.
Anonymous passers by, individuals and crowds are the subject of
Rosie James' investigations. Within her figurative-thread drawings
and screen prints she draws attention to often-overlooked details
found in everyday aoccurrences and looks to capture the commonality
found within groups.
James explores connections between her subjects and their
location by interpreting their surroundings, through drawing and
photography, making reference to buildings, windows and skylines to
suggest urban landscapes. Her energetic, sketch-like, thread
drawings are sewn onto transparent fabrics, to reveal and celebrate
the process of sewing. Loose threads and frayed ends imply speed
and movement, which suggest busy towns and bustling
environments.
Craft Case
Rochester Art Gallery’s Craft Case presents ceramic and glass
faceted boxes, together with a selection of jars and vessels, by
Andrea Walsh. She explores the physical and metaphorical
relationships between the material object and external qualities of
light, shadow and surface.
Alison Lowry's fused textiles in glass aim to capture and
preserve traces of the wearer, translating ethereal properties into
a second skin of memoory using family heirlooms.
Imago: Silverpoint Drawings and Paintings, Reza Ben
Gajra
25 November 2011 – 3 February 2012 
Rochester Art Gallery presents Imago: Silverpoint Drawings
& Paintings by Reza Ben Gajra. The exhibition brings
together recent works concerned with the body and its spiritual and
emotional connections to the heart and mind.
Reza Ben Gajra's imagination and sensitivities are reflected
within the linear qualities found in his silverpoint drawings, the
symbolic representation from metal leaf motifs and the playfulness
of his paintings. The artist describes his work as a visual
language that embraces the interconnections between abstract and
figurative expressions and levels of objectivity between emotional
attachment and detachment.
Reza’s work and the process of producing it, derived initially
from his observations, focusing on composition and pictorial space.
This investigation became consumed by more open experimentation,
using metal leaf, powder pigments, wax encaustic and housepaint
alongside oil paint, and the collaging of his own abandoned
paintings, to emphasise depth of surface and artistic
expression.
Following a year in India in 1989/90, Reza’s visual language and
use of materials became minimalist and formalised, concentrating on
surface arrangement and the stylisation of forms. Metal leaf
replaced paint and colour, and drawing was employed as a tool of
enquiry. The work became increasingly more detailed and linear, and
the scale more intimate. Reza began to use silverpoint, which
requires time and patience. This manifested itself in fine lines
executed very slowly, deliberately and obsessively, perhaps
reflecting thought-processes and memory.
Craft Case
Rochester Art Gallery’s Craft Case presents Nan Nan Liu’s
sculptural paper and previous metal collections, which show her
interest in Chinese culture and ways of storing. Natalie Vardey
uses traditional techniques to weave, knit and crochet fine
precious metals to create delicate jewellery, some of which have
moving parts in acrylic, silver and gold.
Sedimental
25 August - 11 November 2011
Sedimental is a journey of (re)discovery for artist Stephen
Turner; an exploration of significance in nature and a reflection
on how this can be incorporated into his work.
Sedimental includes an exhibition, off-site installation, workshop
and public events that explore layers of meaning surrounding the
Medway estuary, which have been a continual fascination to the
artist during a 16-year association with the river.
For Turner, the Medway estuary reconnects people in our ever
increasing urban lives to the pulsing heart of nature. He examines
threads interweaving geology with history, flora with fauna,
hydrology and river archaeology, purity with contamination and
other such contrasts that make being beside this stretch of tidal
water an enlightening and enriching experience.
The estuary's rich story, animated by people and defined by
place over time is the subject of Turner's intimate conversation
and impetus for connection, using the oldest and newest
technologies - the muddy clay itself and digital audio and video in
collaboration with the river, its histories and its people.
Seaflowers
17 June - 19 August 2011
Seaflowers is an exhibition of contemporary paintings and
textile installations by Kent-based artist Wendy Smith. The
exhibition has been conceived as a celebration of colour and
ritual.
Informed by a recent self-initiated residency on the coast in
Karnataka, South India earlier this year, Smith presents new work
that responds to ritual behaviour, interwoven into the necessities
of daily life and vibrant street culture in South India.
Smith has sought to redefine the exhibition experience by exploring
its possibilities as a visual journey rather then a series of
objects. This is evident in her abstract paintings, based on
seascapes and drawings of temple flowers and textile installations
from sari material, which are sumptuous in texture and colour.
In Seaflowers, Smith has explored pattern and space, absorbing
herself within the richness of Indian colours and the ritual of
making. She has introduced elements of printing, combining her
passions and treating the canvas as both textile and painting.
During her residency, Smith immersed herself in daily life,
observing women and children selling flowers to pilgrims and
tourists outside the temples each morning, while local fishermen
went out to sea night after night, as their families sold the day’s
catch at the market.
Vessel: Still Points / Turning Worlds
1 April - 3 June 2011
Featuring work by Annie Turner, Sara Radstone, Dan Kelly, Kate
Wickham, Ruth Franklin and Robert Cooper - acclaimed ceramists at
The City Lit in London.
The focal point for this group exhibition is the vessel, as an
object and abstract concept. The Vessel becomes the starting point
for unravelling symbolic, conceptual, subversive and figurative
references. Featured right is Ruth Franklin's Russian Revolutionary
Granny 2, 2008.
About the artists
Annie Turner
Annie Turner's sculptural vessels, inspired by the River Deben
in Suffolk, are triggers for personal and collective memories -
contrasting fragile landscapes and the intervention of man.
Find out more about Annie and her work at www.galeriebesson.co.uk/turner.html.
Kate Wickham
Kate Wickham's hand-built vessels explore interplay between
form, surface, colour and texture, containing and preserving
memories like reference points or markers.
Find out more about Kate and her work at www.katewickham.com/.
Ruth Franklin
Ruth Franklin's work combines printmaking techniques and ceramic
sculpture. It concerns family memories, the importance of household
artefacts and their ability to conjure up childhood memories.
Find out more about Ruth and her work at
www.photostore.org.uk/seCVPG.aspx?MID=278&CAT=CRAFTSCOUNCIL.
Sara Radstone
Sara Radstone's sculptures explore themes of history, memory and
place. Recent works are inspired by ambitious display methods -
suspending work with wire and composing wall and freestanding
pieces. Find out more about Sara and her work at www.marsdenwoo.com/radstone/sr1.htm.
Robert Cooper
Robert Cooper is fascinated by the persistence of artefacts and
ideas. He often uses found objects and employs recycling as a mode
of working.
Find out more about Robert and his work at www.robertcooper.net/.
Dan Kelly
Dan Kelly's wheel-thrown vessels combine the aesthetics of the
accidental, appreciated by tea masters, with the exuberance of
expressive painting. Rims are left raw and marks made during the
making process remain.
Find out more about Dan and his work at www.dankellyceramics.com/.
Marta Marcé – Conditions of Abstraction
14 January - 25 March 2011
The gallery presents paintings
by Marcé, a Spanish-born, Berlin-based artist, who
is interested in the idea of play as a metaphor for how society
operates in an era when daily life is becoming ever more
structured, planned and controlled. Featured right is her 2008
painting Flowing in Yellow.
About the artists
Marcé investigates concepts involving the human condition and
the act of painting. She explores the principles of games, rules
and laws; those that encourage obedient behaviour and
those that seek alternatives to the system through judgement,
decision-making and chance. Find out more about Marta at www.martamarce.com/
Craft case
The gallery’s Craft Case features work by
Lindsey Mann and Clare Tindall.
Lindsey Mann’s playful
jewellery and objects are inspired by light-hearted memories of her
childhood, spent surrounded by her father’s collections of vintage
machinery and all things mechanical. Mann’s fascinating mixed-media
pieces combine printed anodised aluminium with silver,
semi-precious stones and colourful objects trouvé. Find out more
about Lindsey at www.lindseymann.co.uk/
Clare Tindall’s colourful
liquid latex plant-like objects are intriguing, playful and
toy-like. Her perfect specimens, made from the sap of the
hervea-brasiliensis tree, are fabricated and manipulated through
moulding, layering, dipping and painting. Undercurrents of mutation
and cloning can be found in her explorations when transposing the
physical elements of one animal or vegetable species to
another.
Get Real
15 October 2010 - 3 January 2011
Get Real brings together contemporary artworks that explore
transformation and communication within unreal, imaginary and
artificial contexts through photography, film, installation,
performance and jewellery.
About the artists
UK-based Italian artist Emilia Telese explores
public and media fascination surrounding icons and celebrities, the
heights of frenzy associated with the act of being famous and
interprets the beauty industry’s obsession with perfection. Find
out more about Emilia at www.emiliatelese.com/.
Rikard Österlund, a Kent-based photographer,
investigates contemporary notions of beauty and our post-modern
relationship to nature through a series of monumental portraits of
Kent artists and theatrical floral compositions influenced by 17th
century Flemish paintings (see image to the right). Find out more
about Rikard at www.rikard.co.uk/ and to see more of
his work, visit http://rikardosterlund.tumblr.com/.
Cumbrian-based jeweller Adam Paxon presents
one-off pieces of sculptural jewellery that reference nature's
languages of warning and courtship while maintaining a dual
identity both on and off the body. Find out more about Adam at
www.adriansassoon.com/.
Moon Young Shin, from South Korea,
creates playful jewellery using silver, pearls, beads and
handcrafted and self-dyed acrylic. Her jewellery attempts to
express paradoxical ideas between the human form and the person
wearing it. Find out more about Moon at www.moon-shin.com/.
Women of Mettle
24 July – 3 October 2010
This exhibition brought together the work of contemporary female
makers who explore domestic, decorative, sculptural and narrative
concerns within the art of metalwork and silversmithing.
About the artists
Li-Sheng Cheng’s silverwork is inspired by her belief that
“everything has a life which should be cherished and
respected”.
Using mild
steel, stainless steel and enamelled copper wire, Frances Brennan
celebrates the unanticipated and the curious in her contemplative,
tangled, spiked and knotted sculptural forms.
Libby Day
balances traditional and computer-aided methodology in her work to
explore related tensions in modern culture through mapping the
layers of connectivity and contrast contained within natural and
man-made structures.
Kate Samuels transfers two-dimensional mark-making to metal
surfaces using vitreous glass enamels, sketches and photography to
develop themes within her work.
Cathy Miles uses wire and found materials to create quirky
three-dimensional drawings of birds and everyday objects.
Ane Christensen’s work explores the boundaries between
functionality and sculptural form. Vessels, created from
deconstructed sheet metal, echo her interest in the negative spaces
between buildings and architectural decay.
Suzanne Wall’s work is a critique of the ideologies embodied in
silver as a precious historical and household material. Our
expectations of silver objects and their function are cleverly
inverted through playful manipulation of her chosen material.
Suspended Animation
1 May - 11 July 2010
This bold and dynamic exhibition of studio glass aims to explore
and capture both physical and emotional responses to organic
states. The cycle of growth, reproduction and decay, along with
many other elements of the natural world, are reflected in diverse
approaches and techniques. The exciting contrasts are designed to
engage the imagination and stir the senses.
About the artists
- Angela Jarman's new works are inspired by animal, vegetable and
mineral concerns. Angela’s work refers to nature but with a sense
of the unnatural, uncanny and sinister, through subtle
references.
- Ruth Dupré's movement and mass are themes that recur as her
sculptural forms exceed their bounds. An organic sense of
contracting, elongation or swelling is inspired by a passion for
contemporary dance.
- Rachael Woodman's highly-refined forms, combined with dazzling
colour and carefully considered use of opaque, translucent and
transparent qualities, characterise her work.
- Joseph Harrington's sense of transience, time and movement is
captured within his sculptural glass. His work holds a fascination
with conditions of change.
- Stuart Akroyd's elegant, organic forms combine a delicate sense
of balance, playfulness and skill, celebrated in his small-scale
sculptural vessels.
- Stephen Gillies and Kate Jones draw inspiration from the
elemental beauty of their rural surroundings in North Yorkshire,
creating simple, jewel-coloured, blown-glass bowls inspired by
patterns found in the natural world.
Thread Bare
13 February - 25 April 2010
Thread Bare brought together the work of Craig Fisher, Lucy
Brown, Joanne Haywood and Judith Dwyer, who use textiles to explore
the human condition, gender-related concerns, relationships between
past and present and narratives constructed around personal and
cultural identity.
About the artists
Craig Fisher's large-scale sculptural installations question
representations of violence, disaster and macho stereotypes. The
resulting textile narratives, which employ both art and craft
techniques, defy easy definition and sit unnervingly between high
and low culture, reality and fantasy, function and dysfunction.
Lucy Brown's installations investigate displacement, the absence
and presence of the body, clothed and unclothed and ideas
surrounding female identity. Social issues are explored through
reconstructing and re-presenting second-hand clothing associated
with the female body. Lucy’s work challenges the boundaries between
fine art and making.
Joanne Haywood's mixed-media jewellery draws on the conflicts of
opposites: skeletal wire forms and fleshy crocheted volumes; the
natural and unnatural; the absence or presence of colour; the
interplay of light and shadow.
Judith Dwyer’s Dangerous Dolls and Dogs juxtaposes
individually dyed silk and velvet bodies with recycled materials to
examine the contradictory elements of our existence.
Coppice
28 November 2009 - 7 February 2010
This examined the work of contemporary artists and makers who
reveal, through their diverse, innovative and experimental
approaches, the intrinsic beauty of wood.
Malcolm Martin and Gaynor
Dowling draw bounding contours and shallow relief,
inspired by land and sea, into oak and lime using basic hand tools.
Tension between form and surface is accentuated by the fall of
light across undulating surfaces and sensual forms.
Inspired by her training in geography and basketry, Dail
Behennah's work is large in scale and abstract in nature.
A preoccupation with geometric forms, coupled with the effects of
light and shadow, have resulted in hanging installations and
meticulously constructed vessel-based forms.
Wycliffe Stutchbury's compositions reveal
wood's unfashioned beauty, durability and vulnerability, while
respecting and emphasising its origin. Found, fallen, forgotten and
liberated timber is altered to create new narratives.
Fusion
5 September - 15 November 2009
This exhibition brought together the work of four contemporary
ceramicists who, at some level, are indebted to the traditional
ceramic practices, philosophy and culture of Japan and the
far-east. Form, function, mark making, the wabi-sabi aesthetic, the
ritual of the tea ceremony and the presentation and display of
objects were all celebrated in this group exhibition.
- Dan Kelly – sensual forms and tactile surfaces
influenced by western expressionism and eastern pottery.
- Jonathan Wade - sophisticated urban ceramics
influenced by Japanese crafts, ancient artefacts, far eastern and
European art, design and architecture.
- Kaori Tatebayashi - hand-built ceramic
sculptures of garments and domestic items, such as Blouse,
pictured above.
- Akiko Hirai - tea bowls and functional
ceramics inspired by the maker's love of language, poetic
observations and short stories and experimental approach to ceramic
materials and firing.
Pulp Fictions
21 June - 30 August 2009
Pulp Fictions explored innovative and exciting ways in which
artists and designer-makers use paper in their creative practice.
The seven exhibitors participating demonstrated diversity in their
approach to materials and in the processes and techniques they use
to create unique and intriguing work, influenced by narrative,
stories and dialogue.
- Tracey Bush – works influenced by the
conventions of collecting and ancient symbols of transformation
(www.traceybush.com).
- Ellen Bell – text drawings
and new works explore and reveal the written and spoken word and
concepts surrounding communication (www.axisweb.org/artist/ellenbell).
- Magie Hollingworth – domestic utensils
inspired by primitive artefacts and archaeology (www.magiehollingworth.co.uk).
- Tracey Falcon – sculptural installations and
narrative pieces concerned with human and social interaction,
propaganda, opinions, truth, facts and fiction (www.traceyfalcon.co.uk).
- Majid Asif – designs constructed in paper and
card using environmental production processes (www.masifdesigns.com).
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.
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.
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/.
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.
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/.
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.
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/.
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.
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.
For further information about the artist, please visit www.wendydaws.co.uk/.
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/.
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.
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/.
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 fibre plants,
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/.
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.
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/.
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.
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.
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.
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