i received some photographs of the rebirth exhibition at gallery art1821 in the e-post today.... would you care to take a look?
please mind your head on the low beams...
fabulous dogwood sculptures by barbara leaney, referencing the natural environment and the interstellar world...
one of my abstract paintings, the edgescape rost...
looking back through the main gallery space; shaun caton's paintings are on the far wall...
another one of my edgescape paintings, corros, surrounded by two framed works by veronica grassi - note the whitewashed, cobbled wall...
a full-on view of corros; there are surprising similarites in both colour and texture between my work and veronica's... and more evidence of those cobbledy, flinty walls..
veronica's work on the other end of the wall; also shown are two small works by sahoko aki...i don't have a list of works so can't supply information on medium and titles - there is much more to see in the exhibition; this is just a small snippet...rebirth: an exhibition celebrating Japanese aesthetic, in collaboration with the Unearthed exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, at the gallery Art 1821 in norwich, from 29 July to 8 September 2010.the gallery art1821 is situated in the cellar in one of norwich's finest medieval buildings, augustine steward house in tombland, reputedly built circa 1549.
[image found on flickr]please visit the Art 1821 website for more information on the rebirth exhibition...last chance to see… textures, traces & elements at beyond the image gallery – the exhibition closes at 4pm on sunday 1st august 2010...coming up: the 11th annual Artworks exhibition at blackthorpe barns, 11 September to 3 October 2010 ... and guess what, i will be hanging my work on yet another medieval flint wall...Artworks is an established group of thirty professional East Anglian visual artists, with the environment and mankind’s impact on it as the broad theme of the 11th Annual exhibition…...
notes from an exhibition
As I was passing through the marketplace towards the forum building in Norwich, to revisit the exhibition Elements: Man and the Environment on its final day, I passed by a secondhand book stall, and, after a few minutes browsing the shelves, came across the novel Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale - perhaps, with a sense of deja-vous or subliminal or tacit knowing, I instantly conjured up what this story might reveal... when one door closes another door opens... the end of an art exhibition is a good time for some reflection.This is a self-portrait taken in the seductive, highly-polished surface of Andrew Campbell's bronze sculpture, 'I remember' at the exhibition Elements. There is always something narcissistic in the allure of the mirrored surface - less about the physical form of an object reflecting its environs, and more about how it plays with our own self-perception...
It appeared to be a direct cast of an inflated balloon, and as a bronze it looked like a majestic orb on its plinth, the sophisticated, beautiful cousin of the ill-fated lead balloon (but even bronze will sink), and also (in my eyes), recalled memories of childhood, of releasing fairground helium balloons high into the sky, with a mixture of uncertainty and excitement - never quite knowing how high or how far they would travel, and where they would eventually land. This bronze balloon was grounded but would, at the very least, avert an instant death by pin... I found by chance (googling bronze balloon) more of Andrew Campbell's work on flickr...Nearby were two mixed media sculptural works by the Norwich-based artist Louise Richardson, pieces which were imbued with a simultaneously poetic and macabre narrative in their dichotomy of materials - dresses made of concrete and bronze, dresses stained and tainted by the earth, left to nature and the elements, enchanting in their suggestion of ancient myths or fairy tales, of the craftsmanship in their delicate making, and yet sinister and haunting in what we see in the casket-like frames, the relics or remains of a past event, of mortality, death or ghosts...
Louise Richardson, 'Being' left and 'Host' right; concrete, cold cast bronze, mixed mediaVeronica Grassi's Decaying Vessels have a simliar, delicate resonance - of fragility and strength, the remains of nests, shells or cocoons, and all exquisitely made with the finest of threads and paper pulp.
Veronica Grassi, 'Decaying Vessels', stitched thread and paperJamie Andrews sculpture, 10,000 Men was the centrepiece of the exhibition, having won the £1000 Bayer Prize. It is made up of 10,000 toy soldiers, coagulated into a resinous, bloodied funereal pile, with a clear message that war is both messy and futile - it made me think of the collective will in the construction of ant-hills too, that even in a situation such as war the soldiers (or workers) just get on with the job ...
Jamie Andrews, '10,000 Men', mixed mediaThese are just a selection of the many artworks in Elements:Man and the Environment, ones which resonated with myself, in a very mixed, curated exhibition. These works were the more inspiring ones, ones which at their core, had materials and craftsmanship as integral to the concepts of the finished work. I may not have earned the grand but I am proud that I was selected, and pleased that my work received such good exposure and some recognition in the process. I will look into that occasional mirror of doubt and see that I am still an artist - it may not be the all-day-every-day occupation that myself and many other artists aspire to, but it is, in the end, my one-and-only vocation...
Jazz Green, 'Rost', mixed media on canvas