Falls the Shadow – a collaboration

Exhibition runs 20th – 27th June 2012
Private view 21st June
Location: Gallery & Project Space

“Between the conception and the creation… Falls the shadow” 
T.S. Eliot

An exhibition of the new work by jeweller Melissa Hunt and mosaic artist Catherine Parkinson exploring the relationship between form and shadow. Both artists will be exhibiting work they have made individually, alongside a collection of innovative pieces which combine mosaic and metals.

Melissa Hunt

Melissa uses the method of photo-etching to depict both the permanent and the fleeting, from architecture to plants and insects. Although traditionally trained and now a practicing jeweller and tutor, Melissa also explores the properties of metals and gemstones in her work by repeating and reviewing such techniques as hand piercing rollerprinting, inlay, enamelling and the addition of gold foil until the desired finish is achieved. An understanding of the potential and limitations of the materials as well as the order in which a piece is fabricated is as important as the resulting appearance.

This joint exhibition is a long-awaited opportunity to include the use of magnets, spacers and hanging mechanisms into Melissa’s work to investigate shadows and reflections, allowing the viewers interactivity with the pieces.

Catherine Parkinson

Closely observed and recorded patterns of nature are a recurrent inspiration for the piecing together of Catherine’s mosaics. The mosaic medium can give an image a depth and solidity that cannot be achieved in any other art form. Sometimes the work is resolved in an abstract manner, other pieces grow into a recognisable scene or still life.

The raw materials used in some of Catherine’s mosaics: old china, found fragments, stones and fossils, have a patina that reflects their history. Often the seeking out of the materials, some of it a deliberate quest and some chanced upon, is as important as making the work itself. A single piece can be a starting point for a new mosaic work.

The juxtaposition of diverse materials and colours is an on going preoccupation. Catherine’s recent work combines painted areas with mosaic, reflecting the contrasting nature of form and shadow.

Websites:
www.melissahuntjewellery.co.uk
www.catherineparkinson.com

Auction

Auction on 11th May 2012 7-9pm
Hosted by Anne Robinson Exhibition
Runs 3rd – 13th May 2012

Natasha Laflin is a much loved artist, illustrator, friend, partner and mother. This event has been organised by her family and friends to raise funds to adapt her house so she can come home after more than four long years under NHS care.

In January 2008, at the age of 40, she suffered a severe brain haemorrhage as a result of a congenital malformation to the blood vessels in her brain. After months in a coma, she was pronounced brain dead. Despite this and many serious setbacks, she has managed to make a slow and painful recovery and is now talking, walking and even painting again. This is due to her own strength, determination and love of life, but also the unfaltering love and support of those close to her. It is with this spirit that we need to bring her home for the next stage of her recovery… that of being able to lead an independent, dignified and meaningful life.

The Protester – Sophie Molins

Exhibition runs 20th – 26th March 2012
Private view 22nd March
Film screening 26th March
Location: Gallery & Project Space

“1984” was not supposed to be an instruction manual.

This year is designated the UN Year of the Co-operative, and the theme for Davos is “Great Transformation”. Last years ‘The Time Person of the Year” was “The Protester”.

The people demanding change are the subject of Sophie Molins’ new exhibition at Great Western Studios. Since 2009 Molins has worked with Artists Project Earth (APE) a charity which funds groups and projects, which raise awareness about and mitigate climate change.

APE has supported and documented: Its float at Notting Hill Carnival; a film at the infamous Burning Man festival in Utah’s Black rock desert; its participation at the United Nations conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen in 2009 and Durban 2011; activist groups such as Liberate Tate, which organized the Reverend Billy’s exorcism of BP at Tate modern: WE CAN at Climate Rush who also organized their children to dress up as endangered animals and visit their MP’s and a Suffragette Tea Party at Heathrow airport against the third runway; recording sessions in Mali for the new Rhythms del Mundo Africa album; and lastly the Occupy camp in London.

The images of these events are an intimate portrait of groups of people who want to change unsustainable systems and try out new ones. There are echoes of the 60’s counterculture revolution in images such as “Occupy The Sky”.  But this new generation of protesters is media savvy, witty, creative and fun. The work explores the slogans and banners with their ironic subversive sound bites that bear witness to deep dissatisfaction and an eagerness for a different model. Slogans:

“Down with that sort of thing”
“the future is on sale”
“the revolution will not be branded”
“time is art not money”

sit alongside poignant portraits of protestors from all walks of life; and burners at burning man and Dogon Dancers in Mali, who star in one of the new RDM videos.

The exhibition premiers a new film of the African Climate March in Durban where song and dance were used in Protest.

On 22nd March at 6.30 Kenny Young APE’s founder will be presenting a sneak preview of the new Rhythms del Mundo Africa Album which features Coldplay, Eminem, Beyonce, Red hot Chilli Peppers, Mumford and sons’  Plan B, Aloe Blacc,  REM, Ali Farka Toure Band, Fleet Foxes, Cee-lo Green and Rokia Traore’. There will be  a guest speaker and an African drumming session.

On Monday 26th March at 6.15pm there will  will be a screenings of The Crisis of Civilization www.crisisofcivilization.com  After which there will be a Q & A  with the film’s author Nafeez Ahmed,  the director – Dean Puckett and the animator – Lucca Benny.

Artists Project Earth  (APE) collaborates with international musicians to produce three fundraising albums to date: Rhythms Del Mundo: Cuba, RDM: Classics and most recently, RDM: Revival. This year APEs fourth album, Rhythms del Mundo: Africa will be released. Profits from sales of the albums have supported over 300 projects all around the world that are helping to mitigate, adapt to and raise awareness of, climate change.

Sophie Molins works in photography, found objects, drawing and web worlds. With an eye for the surreal and the ironic Molins’ work focuses on the physical minutiae of our culture: mundane items that exist in the background of our daily lives; text, fake animals and windows become metaphors for our ethical and emotional condition, poignantly highlighting our projections, our consumption and frailties as a species. She currently has a web commission for the National Trust on at Attingham Park, Shropshire and an exhibition at Riverside Studios has just finished. She has won awards form the New York Times, Westminster Arts, the Arts Council and exhibits frequently here and abroad.

“The Crisis of Civilization’ is a remixed documentary feature film, exploring the interconnected nature of global crises. Documentary filmmaker Dean Puckett interrogates the writer and international security analyst Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It – a powerful critique of a failed global system and a manifesto for constructive social change. The film incorporates an imaginative montage of public domain archive footage, newsreel and stunning original animation to offer a powerful wake-up call, warning that the inability to recognise the interconnections between different crises is preventing us, as a civilisation, from saving ourselves.

Further information: www.sophiemolins.com

Margarita Trushina

Exhibition runs 13th – 19th March 2012
Private view 13th March
Location: Gallery & Project Space

The exhibition of new work by Margo Trushina presents an examination of modes of perception of the Sublime and a case study of the conditions that might guarantee this intensive feeling in the postmodern environment.

‘Sublime And Instruction’ showcases a series of constructed images and installations, where the dichotomy of the two terms in the title are analyzed through the use of new media and paradoxes and metaphors are rendered with minimalist elegance. On the one hand, Trushina’s works appear as a logical continuation of classical landscape tradition, representing the themes of romantic painting, praising nature, skies, waterfalls, and the extraordinary phenomenon of the rainbow. On the other hand, by marrying abstraction, representation and combining the flat didacticism of photographs with the cold surfaces of technological and industrial materials, Trushina addresses the present condition of human relations with nature – our desire to investigate, intervene and make use of it, demonstrating both our perpetual aspiration towards nature and simultaneous desire to transform it according to our own needs.

The very history of the notion of the sublime is bound to its relation with Instruction. In the era of Romanticism, the sublime was seen as a feeling awaken by the forces of nature, by phenomena beyond conventional understanding and beyond human powers. The development of western philosophy in the last fifty years, particularly with Structuralism (Lyotard, Derrida), took the notion of the sublime into a linguistic dimension, stressing the over-regulation and over-determination of human life by language and the difficulty to escape pre-given, common emotional reactions. Trushina’s works investigate this concept as an aspect of the power of the given instructions and detect the fact that the space for experiencing the sublime drastically shrinks in postmodern conditions of existence.

The artist’s playful artistic experiments with her own photographs (which were made during her trips to Brazil and United States last year), objects and brutal industrial materials result in simultaneously sculptural and digital installations. The substance of these unexpectedly powerful, but delicate ‘physical environments’ appears to fluidly oscillate from physical surrounds to other-worldly experiences. Ranging from sentimental to the rational, the works dwell on the rites of passages human relations go through. Emptiness, freedom, uncertainty, enclosure and imbalance are among the sentiments displayed through these encounters between nature and technology. Trushina’s ‘environments’ create images with a totemic power of an object for worship. Although a worship of nature opening a space for self-forgetfulness, this overwhelming experience of mystification is of course illusory – a ‘replica’, an ‘artificial’ Sublime, offering a simulacrum of what we might never know in times when self-consciousness, reason and rational knowledge have taken over the realm of feelings and emotions.

The exhibition is open at Great Western Studios from the 13th to 19th of March. It continues at Salon Vert, London, from 23rd of March to 29th April. Trushina studied Photography at Moscow State University and Institute of Problems of Contemporary Art under Josef Bakhstein in Moscow.

She then went to obtain her MA in Fine Art from the Chelsea College of Art in London. Since 2006 she has shown in various exhibitions in Russia, Europe and the UK. In addition to gallery shows, her works recently featured in numerous public exhibitions, including “Russian Cosmos” at Castello De Rivoli Museo D’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy; Multi-Media Art Museum, Moscow;  “In The Middle of Nowhere”, Chelsea Parade Ground, London; The Spiral Moment, Archstoyanie, Moscow, and others.

Trushina lives and works between Moscow and London. She is represented by Salon Vert gallery.

Further information:
www.margotrushina.com

Sebastian Bergne – A Table Thursday

23rd February – 8th March 2012
Private view Thursday 23rd February 6 – 9pm.
Dinners on Tuesday 28th February, Friday 2nd March and Thursday 8th March

By day, a quiet exhibition of a long laid table, a table of beautiful objects poised for the start of a meal. By night, the exhibition comes alive as  a bustling table of people eating together.

Designing for the preparation and consumption of food has become the speciality of designer Sebastian Bergne. Whether it’s cookware for Tefal, an Ice Cream machine for Heston Blumenthal or exquisite glassware for his own collection, the objects are best appreciated when used.

This simple notion is the key to this unusual exhibition of work spanning 15 years. It is on the one hand an exhibition of beautiful objects, but on the other, a series of dinners hosted in the space at Great Western Studios that allow guests to use the exhibits and so fully appreciate them whilst sharing dinner with like-minded people.

Orientated design by a recognised British designer in a venue respected for its creative environment, but also a series of three dinners (75 covers) with a mixture of invited and ticketed seating.

The evening guests will be a mixture of significant professional and social opinion makers within the creative industries. There will also be a launch of a new project that will be shown and used for the first time at the exhibition.

Please note that the dinners are a private event that have a fixed menu that may contain nuts, dairy products, gluten and meat. Regrettably we are unable to cater for people with special dietary requirements. We will however be publishing a detailed menu as soon as possible.

Further information: www.buysebastianbergne.com

Turning the Tables

Friday 19th Jan – 18th Feb 2012
Private view Thursday 18th Jan
Location: Gallery & Project Space

When I asked my architect friends, “Have you got a table to exhibit in seven weeks’ time?”, the intention of such an open brief was to discover their design preoccupations and discover what tales these tables tell about life – here and now.

There were twelve different responses – six tables designed especially for this exhibition, along with another six new tables; eleven were first time on show a month ago at TESTBED1, Battersea. Great Western Studios invited us for a second round.

All tables, but one, were designed by architects who focus on architecture, tending to collaborate with many disciplines, who are all involved in a long process of production, from generating the design to the built end product on site. Nevertheless, more and more architects delight in directly making the real thing, and tables seem a great example of a pleasurable (yet relatively short) task that architects can enjoy making, right up to the moment of having the prototype in hand. They, unlike product designers or artists, still lack the system of networking via agents, galleries or others and their design stays in the private realm without reaching the public domain, thus my incentive for this exhibition.

The incredibly wide range of CNC cutting machines and 3D printers, enables today’s processes to be more affordable than even five years ago, cutting different materials, in almost no time, or laying others in tight layers; unsurprisingly nine architects out of twelve designers used these technologies. Nevertheless, the different digital tools and technologies – which became rapidly a common place for architects –  naturally influence design without generating, leading or determining it, as was until five or six years ago.

The stage belongs again to desires, and ideas lead the design, while the choice of material or technologies becoming secondary. Thus more than ever before architects are fully engaged with drawings on their computers –  a sketch that captures an idea is articulated and perfected through a three dimensional digital drawing – and there lies the real artistic craft of the architect these days. Yet with the manufacturing often dependent on the machine, the artistic quality resides and is controlled by the drawing; surely a meaningful change of character.

Architects have become the makers of 1:1 building fragments and objects – a revolutionary shift, turning them from the visionaries who often lead design processes through the crafts of others to the crafty makers themselves.

Tables included in the exhibition; The Laid table: Will Alsop, Phable: Cinimod Studio, Embrace: Peter Cook and Yael Reisner, stressDESK: Bernd Felsinger, The indesructible: Pablo Gill and Jaime Bartolome, 8×4=2: Barnaby Gunning, The tree of dining: Helen and Hard, Labour of wood: Sandra Knöbl with Rudolf Knöbl, Nurbster II: marcosandmarjan, The sleep of reason brings forth Take-away: NaJa-deOstos, Stress Out: sixteen*(makers), Water Table: HengZhi.

DR Yael Reisner, curator.

Further information:

Yael Reisner www.yaelreisner.com

Sandra Knobl www.labour-of-wood.at
Will Alsop www.all-worldwide.com
Helen and Hard www.hha.no
Cinimod Studio  www.cinimodstudio.com
NaJa & deOstos www.naja-deostos.com
Pablo Gill and Jaime Bartolome www.gilbartolome.com
Barnaby Gunning  www.barnabygunning.com
Heng Zhi www.vimeo.com/29387944