Life’s a Gas 1 march to 26 april 2008 Recent work by Rebecca Fortnum, Beth Harland, Helen Ireland, Frances Richardson & Emma Tod
But it really doesn't matter at all, No it really doesn't matter at all, life's a gas, I hope it's gonna last. T-Rex, 1971
We are delighted to welcome Rebecca Fortnum as guest curator for Life’s A Gas. Rebecca Fortnum is Senior Lecturer at University of the Arts, London and Research Fellow at the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University. She is the author of Contemporary British Women Artists, in their own words, published in 2007. Rebecca Fortnum’s current visual work continues to explore themes of intimacy. Paintings, prints and objects relate to create an internal dialogue, investigating the dynamics of seeing and feeling. Beth Harland’s recent series of paintings references diagrams, texts and video footage documenting the artist working with projected images and films in the studio, to reflect upon time, absorption and viewing as a haptic experience. The aim in Helen Ireland’s most recent work is to find a way of simplifying forms and to realise their potential and beauty as shapes. By paring down each image to a cut, flat motif she became more acquainted with the plants themselves, discovering particular patterns and rhythms within each. Frances Richardson describes her sculptural works as “walk-in drawings”. The intent is that the viewer, does not stand apart regarding an object, or enter into an installation, but becomes part of an imaginary field within actual space. In this field tables, chairs, I-beams, floorboards, carpets, beds etc. are “drawn” using MDF/plywood in 3 dimensions. Paired down to structural forms they effect through their physical presence, denying the seduction of surface histories. Emma Tod's work is concerned with the act of looking – both in the sense of looking "at" and looking "for"; a search. Her short films play with the camera's "focus", with what it assumes is the "subject". The false assumptions and mistakes that occur then become part of the work. Fragments of time discovered during the editing process, which may otherwise have been overlooked or discarded, often become the starting point for her paintings and bookworks.
