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| Mixed Christmas 12 November – 18 December 2005 Chatwin and Martin • Assheton Gorton Asif Kamal • Ken Lee • Anastasia Lewis David Measures • Susan Michie • Ian Sherman Bette Spektorov • David Willetts |
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This group exhibition brings together a diverse mix of artists, both in terms of personal geography and artistic preoccupation. It allows each artist an opportunity to exhibit a small selection of current work in progress, and as such gives the viewer a taster of their practice at the present time. The exhibition has no set theme. Media include drawing, printmaking, watercolour and oil painting; subject matters span natural history, landscape, the theatre, worlds of fantasy and of the psyche, places familiar and places never before glimpsed. The worked prints of Southwell Minster by David Willetts that extend along the length of the long wall in the main exhibition space explore notions of reproduction and revelation. The image, which remains constant, is brought into and out of focus in an atmospheric haze of gently worked surface. Tarts, by Loughborough-based artists Chatwin and Martin, are part of a much larger series of work entitled One More Mouthful. This recent project is the result of a collaboration between the artists and the entomologist Peter O’Toole that explores the life history of the wild honey bee. Chatwin and Martin, who spent time in Texas, USA as part of the project, use the word ‘tart’ to describe a particular aspect of the bee’s behaviour. The drawings of Susan Michie are wrought over long periods of time. Hers is a painstaking process, a methodical hatching and scoring of lines, dots, tiny marks, extended marks, that in themselves give little, but which when taken together as a whole provide curiously impactful, almost nostalgic abstract forms. Two distinctly different genres of painting are employed by Anastasia Lewis: one minimalist, reductionist even: the other traditional landscape. Lewis is presently seeking to probe the landscape form, and in her recent paintings of the Lincolnshire coastal flatland she has incorporated flat blocks of colour. These in some way block belief in the picture behind, reminding the viewer that what they see is never what they ultimately get. Mischievous allegorical reflections on life, magic realism and heightened, expressive colouration fuel the paintings that populate the smaller, brick-floor room. Here are the worlds of Ken Lee, Asif Kamal and Bette Spektorov. Spektorov draws influences from Eastern European religious iconography and textiles; Kamal from the idle sketching of his youth in northern Pakistan; and Lee from his working life within the theatre and opera. Flights of unreality are depicted with extraordinary dexterity by Assheton Gorton. Gorton, who spent much of his adult life designing sets for films, does not restrict himself to paint and pencil, but uses computer graphics techniques and etching in his pictures. The places he visualises are at once arcane and futuristic, fearful and comforting. The craggy British coastline paintings of David Measures are all recent works. Best known for his work as an illustrator of natural history, Measures has obsessively recorded the world around him for over 40 years, working largely in situ, often in all weathers, with a tenacity of intent and an assurance of stroke that have become his hallmark. The pictures on display have all been made following recent serious illness. Pilton Passions is the name artist Ian Sherman gives his hand-painted oyster shells. Each shell has been dug from the garden of his home in Barnstaple, north Devon, and each short piece of prose he has composed himself. These are polished mementoes … moments of contrived reverie … Sherman having fun… |
