'Contemporary Art for Christmas 2009' group exhibition curated by Lloyd Gill The galleries principle is to exhibit National and International of an exceptionally high standard. This exhibition will further than policy by provided the same quality at affordable prices. Last year, the gallery had a successful exhibition at Christmas and as part of the promotion, the gallery offered free vintage champagne for purchasers to take home. We want to continue the success this year and the offer of free champagne for purchases will remain. The exhibition will showcase examples of Contemporary Art from a range of mediums including painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture.
Frankie Partridge's childhood was spent at the local swimming pool on Jesus Green in Cambridge,or canoeing on the river Cam with her best mate Lois, in a boat made by herself and her Dad. Saturdays were spent drawing and painting or making primitive comics with printing gel, or writing purple-passaged novels. There were nights spent sneaking out with a gang of friends to look round the fairground at the age of eight, or later on, punting down the river from Granchester during May Ball time. Frankie believed she was an artist, so Frankie went to Bath Academy of Art to study Visual Communication. She spent four years there, studying printmaking techniques, but was not interested in advertising as a career so eventually made a career in teaching, after studying Humanities at UWE and then a PGCE at Bristol University. Frankie went on to do a Masters in Education at UWE, and a course in Dyslexia. She had a daughter in that time, and when she was three, she wrote a visual story for BBC Playschool which was presented in both the UK and Australia. During the 1990's, she travelled greatly during her long summer holidays, visiting relatives in Whangarei, North Island New Zealand several times, making journeys through South East Asia and also visiting Ghana. Frankie also got back into printmaking, making monoprints. At the Praxis Gallery in Bristol, she exhibited her impressionistic wilderness and rainforest prints, inspired by the wildernesses of North Island NZ. Frankie was in love with Ponga fern trees, in the primordial rainforest there, and the strange wild beauty of the mangrove swamps. She exhibited at the old Happening Gallery, with other artists, on Cotham Hill. She has also worked on Murals with her friend Clare Calascione, including the Balloon mural in the BRI, and the mural in the corridor of Frenchay Hospital Children's ward. They also produced the mural for the first Bristol Parkway station. Murals were part of her development to large scale works. When the Praxis Gallery closed down, she continued to Monoprint in oils with the Spike Island Etching Studio as it was then, under Martin Grimmer. This was at Artspace, in Gas Ferry Road. Coincidentally, Frankie Partridge was one of the founding members of Artspace. When Spike Island moved round the corner to its premises in Cumberland road, she continued to print there using both the etching and screenprint facilities. With Spike Print Studio, she has been involved in many exhibitions including one at the Serpentine Gallery in London, in Bath at the Edgar Modern, and the recent ones in Bristol at Paintworks and The Awning Project. Frankie had a joint exhibition there with Maita Robinson in November 2007. Her recent interests in printmaking have been in two directions: the depiction of light, colour and movement in water trying to convey the essential elements and in the strange and exotic underworlds of people that exist on the fringes of life, such as travellers with funfairs. Then there are those from every walk of life who come together in love of the 'rush' of a 'white knuckle ride'. For this, the element of photography is important for me as it is proof of the existence of 'strange' reality, and it can tell a story without words. Conversely, she also has an interest in brushstroke marks; these Frankie loves to see in her monoprinted or painted work, as they are evidence of the movement and touch of the brush - built up they recreate a new reality.
Antonia Hadjicosta's work is based on recent catastrophic events that happen around the world. She is working through photographic images that show mostly the victims of these disasters. Her target is to evoke feelings and protest against what is happening. Working mostly on small scale canvases has given her the chance to use quick brushstrokes from which her figures appear. A main characteristic of her work is the coloured backgrounds of the paintings. In this way Antonia eliminates many details from the photographic images that she find's, while she presents only characteristics that evoke her subject and idea. Antonia uses all range of colours in her paintings, from vivid to muted colourations, depending on each painting and the idea she wants to represent. In this way, Antonia creates an irony that sometimes confuses the viewer about the story of each painting. In some of her paintings, Antonia leaves blank spaces that create a dramatic feeling, while this balances the whole outcome. Antonia has been looking also into artists like Peter Doig, for his use of photographic images as a source, his compositions and his handling of paint and colour. Another artist is Robert Longo with his massive drawings that represent catastrophic events, in a realistic manner, that seem as photographic images. Ben Grasso presents imaginary catastrophic events, in a realistic manner, which confuses the viewer as to whether they are real or not. In addition, Antonia has been looking at the handling of paint and dark colours of Fransisco Goya who was a master painter in representing historic catastrophic events, like his painting "The Third of May 1808",which is considered a highly romantic painting, even though it was characterized by Greenberg as modern.
Louise Michelle Reade won the Weston College Governor's prize for outstanding achievements in the Creative Arts during her studies for a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at Weston College, in 2004. In the same year, Louise attended the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff until 2007 to study for a BA (hons) in Fine Art. During her foundation course, Louise developed an expressive style of painting that captured rapid brush strokes. Her work was dramatic and mainly figurative. Concentrating on approach and process. Louise created colourful works, which were the embodiment of energy. Her process included using her fingers to implement the paint in a defining texture. She continued to develop this during her first years at university, which soon progressed onto her paintings being a little more controlled than her usual expressive style. In the final year of her University degree, she focused particularly on portraits. They were bold pieces with large areas of colour, and in some cases fragmented. This progressed onto the portraits being an abstract, yet, linear line, still with a large area of colour to complement it. The artist Gary Hume, who Louise had used as part of her research, largely inspired these final pieces. In the year after her degree, her progress had been limited. Louise made a few more paintings of portraits, but her work was mainly kept in sketchbooks as drawings of things around her, or from photos Louise had taken. Her most recent work has been inspired by a couple of trips Louise made to Venice and New York. These trips hugely motivated her, and she feels she is progressing as an artist, as her interests are taking shape once again. Louise became particularly keen on developing work from her "Bikes in New York" piece. She was fascinated by chained up bikes she saw in New York City when she visited in December 2008. They all had a similar character about them, a sense of abandonment. They were rusted, and some with missing wheels; they were everywhere. When she returned to her home in the UK, she decided to paint these bikes. Louise enjoyed painting them, particularly the long frames and the interesting angle, which Louise had never really noticed before, of those oddly circular shapes we see as the bicycle's wheels. This made her want to paint more bikes. Louise has become strangely motivated by these objects that she perhaps once would have thought of as boring, and Louise is now embracing them. It is not her intent to ensure them as political, although some may believe so, but instead they act as an invigorating subject for her so far, as a somewhat struggling artist.
Ryan Austin Davy's images allow viewers to be amused by showing men in unconventional ways. The images are designed to illustrate the male form as a thing of beauty and to be gazed at by everyone. Ryan is purposefully making viewers realise that these images are also designed to reveal ideals about the male body. However, the subtext that underpins the raw nudity is unpicking the negative ways of imposing unrealistic expectations on men, for instance, to be muscled or beautiful. It's actually hard work and a real imposition to be the ideal, to possess flawless parts. Ryan is playing with what photography can do. This involves focusing on ideal forms in four strategies revealing tension between ordinary people and the beautifully proportioned body that is a big imposition to achieve. The first involves men posing in recognisable statue positions, imitating symbols of the idealised form. Ryan is utilizing the average man to reveal the pressure between the concept of male beauty and the everyday man.. The second entails literally imposing a photograph of the 'muscle man' onto a slender built body using projection. This directly supports the notion of the imposition to be the ideal. The third concerns men's representation. Ryan's images are of men trapped in imaginary boxes. He considers one is always trapped within a stereotype, constantly judged by others. Not only is he making this point, Ryan is also making a joke about photography, about being trapped in the photographic. The imaginary box represents the frame, literally trapping men in their frames. The final is highlighting the fact photography and society is obsessed with forming flawless body parts. One is broken up from an entire person and people see others as collections of modified physical forms.
Scott Fynn This photographic project was based in an elderly peoples retirement complex in Oxford called 'Pegasus Grange'. Within the site there are ninety flats, all of which are privately owned by the residents, all of whom live independently. There are a variety of facilities such as a gym and library and both indoor and outdoor communal spaces. Initially, I expected Pegasus Grange to be quite a depressing place. However, my experience, after meeting a number of the residents, proved to be very different. These elderly people, although now with some physically restrictions, are still leading active and independent lives. This inspired me to capture and convey in a photojournalistic way, the lifestyle of this close-knit community of elderly residents within the spaces their lives in a positive, rewarding and dignified way. These five selected images are part of a larger series. They were taken using a medium format, Bronica 645 camera.
Jonty Hurwitz The distance separating science and art is becoming smaller. As humanity evolves, we become more conscious of a holistic "one-ness" in our Cosmos. Binge Thinking is a collection of art works that are painted with physics as the brush, mathematics as the canvas. Beyond the Illusion. I was recently having lunch with an friend who operates deep within the high art world. "Jonty," he said, "I hope I don't offend you, but I feel you're the David Blane of the Art world". Actually, I happen to love David Blane, so my first reaction was a kind of eye-twitching amusement. I have always wondered whether or not David Blanes "tricks" are real, I so I can't deny that I did have a moment of questioning whether this mean my art was somehow a little fake. We all feel like fakes from time to time. "Your work," he said, "is wonderful, its unique but it leaves no room for interpretation." Upon reflection and meditation, I realise that something much deeper is at play here. The fact that each of my pieces offers some kind of absolute mathematical resolution seems to intimidate observers into believing that the reflection of the art is the actual art itself. Dark Matters Dark matter. Put in simple terms (if that's possible), the current main stream scientific view is that approximately 90% of the mass in our galaxy is made up of deeply invisible stuff that nobody has ever seen. Put another way, for every Sun (star) in the Milky Way (and we've counted about 100 billion of them) there are roughly 9 more invisible ones not too far way. It turns out that unless we can find this invisible mass, we have no way to justify why our own Sun (and the earth with you and I on it) don't go hurtling uncontrollably into cold empty space. The whole concept of galactic-scale Dark Matter hiding under my nose doesn't ring particularly true with me. Missing energy...yes...but is that energy mass? No. Call it a gut feel - maybe one day I'll publish my volumes of notes on the subject. I believe that modern astrophysics has got its knickers in a mathematical twist. It may come as a shock but physics is ultimately a matter of belief. To mark this moment of astrophysical fundamentalist madness I decided to make a dark matter man. The copper (which incidentally can only be made in an exploding sun) creates the "empty space". The 'nothingness' in the middle is a man.
The compelling energy of Alice White's work is a plundering of documentation, a revisiting of people or places, which are half-remembered. Alice is fascinated by that which can be captured by an image, and that which lies on the periphery of vision, perhaps caught in a brushstroke but never entirely contained. Moments of beauty, of intensity, of tragedy gradually become abstract source material, guiding the emotive power of her paintings. The subject of her work is at once figurative, referring to form and character, and conceptual, exploring accumulated memories which lay dormant in the mind and which rarely if ever entirely surface. Alice seeks to present the transitory, almost exotic feel of experiences and instances as they become blurred and augmented in the mind; to create a fusion between the intangible rush of experience and the evidence of living.
