Upcoming exhibitions

David Blackburn

David Blackburn |This is not a Rehearsal

23rd March - 10th April 2010

Opening: Tues 23rd March, 5.30 – 7pm

 

 

David’s work focuses on the body as a material and poetic means to explore the human condition. Assembled and constructed objects are striking as metaphors for the body.

Each work is encapsulated in an object that serves as a vessel to be inhabited and vacated. Questions about how to distinguish between the flesh and the psyche are raised, as the relationships between objects and materials vary, and suggested reconciliations are played out.

Reference is drawn to Vanitas painting; there is a delicately macabre sense of fragility to the works. However, the impressions of decay are challenged by a sense of nurture and compassion as well as the preciousness with which each form is preserved. Constructed and reconstructed examples of human intervention also pervade throughout the works, and an emphasis on sensuality invites one to contemplate with empathy before intellect.

David graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts with a BFA in 1992. His recent work has increasingly focused on research and experimentation around ways to reinvent the human form.

Barbara Cope and Diane Halstead

Barbara Cope, Diane Halstead | New Work

13th April - 1st May 2010

Opening: Tues 13th April, 5.30 – 7pm

 

Susan Thomas - Still

Susan Thomas |Still

4th - 22nd May 2010

Opening: Tues 4th May, 5.30 – 7pm

Susan Thomas’ painted abstractions explore the role played by relational dynamics in our perception of individual figures.

The sense of security, safety, familiarity and comfort that one is embraced by in a domestic setting is referenced through combinations of soft pastel palettes with earth tones, exposed wood grain and feathery areas of paint and pencil-work - retaining a sense of the human and nature.

However, our perception of the natural is questioned, as the visual descriptors neglect to classify subject matter. Spatial arrangements of line, mass and light cause boundaries to cross into territories occupied by others, and as elements of tone intermingle, objects cease to be solitary entities. By flattening the picture plane, the negative space that frames what the tangible is recognised; the background is brought into equal significance with the foreground.

When the eye is permitted to meander in contemplation of light and form, we can encounter unexpected interactions within surroundings that seem fixed. Tampering with pattern, Thomas’ work invites us to approach experience of the world with playfulness, imagination and appreciation of detail.