Lughnasadh
Fully illustrated catalogue for the international online 'Wheel of the Year' exhibition 'Lughnasadh' at animamundigallery.com
Fully illustrated catalogue for the international online 'Wheel of the Year' exhibition 'Lughnasadh' at animamundigallery.com
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<strong>Lughnasadh</strong>
In many traditions, time is considered to be cyclical<br />
rather than straight line. Perceived as a perpetual<br />
cycle of growth and retreat tied to the Sun’s annual<br />
death and rebirth. This cycle is also viewed as a<br />
micro and macrocosm of broader life cycles in an<br />
immeasurable series of rotations composing the<br />
Universe. The days that fall on the landmarks of the<br />
yearly cycle traditionally mark the beginnings and<br />
middle-points of the four seasons.<br />
‘<strong>Lughnasadh</strong>’ is the eighth and final incarnation<br />
in an evolving series of Anima Mundi online mixed<br />
exhibitions following this rhythm of the seasons,<br />
known as ‘the wheel of the year’. This ‘calendar’<br />
provides a cue for the duration of each show, and<br />
inevitably flavours the selection of works presented.<br />
2
“For many generations… they obeyed the laws<br />
and loved the divine to which they were akin…<br />
they reckoned that qualities of character were<br />
far more important than their present prosperity.<br />
So they bore the burden of their wealth and<br />
possessions lightly, and did not let their high<br />
standard of living intoxicate them or make them<br />
lose their self-control… But when the divine<br />
element in them became weakened… and their<br />
human traits became predominant, they ceased to<br />
be able to carry their prosperity with moderation.”<br />
Plato, Timaeus<br />
3
Tim Shaw (b. 1964)<br />
The Imperial War Museums have acquired<br />
Tim Shaw’s monumental sculpture ‘Man<br />
On Fire’ to be permanently installed at the<br />
Imperial War Museum North in front of the<br />
museum’s Libeskind building. The work,<br />
cast into bronze, was unveiled in July 2023.<br />
‘Man On Fire’ was originally conceived in<br />
response to the US-led invasion of Iraq.<br />
Larger than life in scale at 4 x 4 x 2.5 m, it<br />
captures the horrific moments of a figure<br />
on fire, caught in conflict. The sculpture<br />
is a powerful image of contemporary<br />
conflict and compassionately relates to the<br />
human cost of war. Originally shaped by<br />
photographs of a soldier diving for his life<br />
from a burning armoured vehicle during a<br />
riot in Basra, Iraq 2005, ‘Man on Fire’ bears<br />
witness to the universal horror of war. War is<br />
time old, and conflict does not discriminate<br />
between gender, age or country. Russia’s<br />
brutal invasion of Ukraine, testifies to the<br />
fact that we continually repeat the same<br />
tragic mistakes.<br />
Shaw is a British artist, born in Belfast, he<br />
currently lives in Cornwall. He was elected<br />
an Academician at The Royal Academy<br />
in 2013 and made a Fellow of The Royal<br />
British Society of Sculptors and a Fellow of<br />
Falmouth University the same year. Shaw<br />
has had a number of significant public<br />
solo exhibition throughout the UK, Ireland<br />
and internationally. He has undertaken a<br />
number of public commissions including<br />
‘The Rites of Dionysus’ for The Eden<br />
Project, ‘The Minotaur’ for The Royal Opera<br />
House and ‘The Drummer’ for Lemon Quay,<br />
Truro. A more overtly political side to his<br />
work became evident through a number<br />
of sculptures responding to the issues<br />
of terrorism and conflict. ‘Tank on Fire’<br />
was awarded the selectors prize at the<br />
inaugural Threadneedle Prize in 2008 and<br />
the installation ‘Casting a Dark Democracy’<br />
was reviewed in 2008 by Jackie Wullschlager<br />
of The FT as ‘The most politically charged<br />
yet poetically resonant new work on show<br />
in London’. Shaw has been supported by<br />
the Kappatos Athens Art Residency, The<br />
Kenneth Armitage Foundation, The British<br />
School of Athens,The Delfina Studio Trust<br />
through residencies in Greece, Spain and a<br />
fellowship in London. Most recently as an<br />
Artist Fellow at the Kate Hamburger Centre<br />
for Advance Study in the Humanities of<br />
‘Law and Culture’ In Bonn, Germany where<br />
he began work on ’The Birth of Breakdown<br />
Clown’ an existential sculptural work<br />
utilising sculpture, robotics and AI.<br />
Horror of War (Cast Head of Man on Fire (Imperial War Museum North))<br />
resin (edition of 8), 66 x 60 x 58 cm<br />
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Man on Fire (Working Model)<br />
bronze (edition of 9), 38 x 40 x 25 cm<br />
7
David Kim Whittaker (b. 1964)<br />
Yelena (Victim of War) is a multi-media<br />
portrait made of Yelena Bolyachenko.<br />
a woman who was badly wounded by a<br />
Russian missile strike as she drank tea in<br />
her kitchen in the Ukraine.<br />
Most of David Kim Whittaker’s paintings are<br />
based upon a metaphysical interpretation<br />
of the human head. These portrait portals,<br />
are often ambiguous, with the aim of<br />
representing the totality of the human<br />
condition - both the universal and the<br />
empathetic alongside personal experience.<br />
The works often juggle dual states of<br />
inner and outer calm and conflict, offering<br />
a glimpse of simultaneous strength and<br />
fragility, conscious and subconscious,<br />
masculine and feminine.<br />
The paintings express Whittaker’s constant<br />
focus on an attempt to express with the<br />
compounding global tensions of this<br />
particlar moment. A dual reflection of<br />
hope and warning stares back at us from<br />
the frame.<br />
Whittaker is a British artist born in<br />
Cornwall where they still reside.<br />
Exhibitions have been held internationally,<br />
notably including a major solo exhibition<br />
at the prestigious Fondazione Mudima in<br />
Milan in 2017. Works are in numerous<br />
museum collections, art foundations and<br />
international private collections. Whittaker<br />
was further acknowledged in 2011 as the<br />
recipient of the Towry Award (First Prize) at<br />
the National Open Art Competition.<br />
Yelena (Victim of War)<br />
oil, acrylic, pencil, china marker, cloth, torn bible, vinyl, tissue on primed panel, 91 x 91 cm<br />
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David Cooper (b. 1972)<br />
“There are acts of terror that can’t be ignored<br />
or cleared from the mind. These ‘War Hed’s’<br />
came about following Russia’s invasion of<br />
Ukraine. In this series destruction is the<br />
making. Clay, a simple medium from the<br />
ground, moulded with taped hands, and<br />
bitten, to sculpt the brutal yet fragile<br />
pieces. Biting the clay became symbolic of<br />
an act of unarmed survival.”<br />
David Cooper’s work deals with disorder.<br />
His work is examined inside out, and outside<br />
in, through a series of unpremeditated and<br />
intuitive processes. The works inquire into<br />
a humanity that feels, fears and confronts<br />
restriction and control; a state of being<br />
often conducive to an abominable sense<br />
of desolation and fettered anxiety. These<br />
unknown (and unknowable) aspects of the<br />
human condition, driven by momentary<br />
absences of restraint, structure and<br />
control are embodied. Broken happenings,<br />
motivated by instinct, assemblage<br />
techniques and random thoughts, naivety<br />
and energy are exploited to sculpt the<br />
identity of these unfathomable aspects of<br />
human experience.<br />
David Cooper was born in Wakefield, West<br />
Yorkshire in 1972. He currently lives and<br />
works in Suffolk. Cooper studied Fashion<br />
at John Moores University followed by an<br />
MA in Fashion Design at Central Saint<br />
Martins where he went on to become<br />
lead designer and head of menswear at<br />
Alexander McQueen. More recently Cooper<br />
attended Fine Art summer school at<br />
the Slade School of Fine Art in 2008.<br />
Works have been exhibited extensively in<br />
the UK.<br />
.<br />
‘War Hed (The Fallen)’<br />
bronze (edition of 3), 26 cm height<br />
11
Paul Benney (b. 1959)<br />
Paul Benney was born in London and<br />
currently lives and works in Suffolk. He rose<br />
to international prominence as a member of<br />
the Soho and East Village Neo-Expressionist<br />
group, whilst living and working in New<br />
York City in the 1980s where he worked and<br />
exhibited alongside peers Marylyn Minter,<br />
Jean-Michel Basquiat and David Wojnarovicz<br />
among the many other others who made<br />
up the exploding NY art scene. Despite<br />
living and working in this extraordinary<br />
creative environment Benney’s painting<br />
maintained a uniquely English sensibility.<br />
Collections including the Metropolitan<br />
Museum of Art in New York, The Brooklyn<br />
Museum, The National Gallery of Australia<br />
and The National Portrait Gallery in London,<br />
The Royal Collection and The Eli Broad<br />
Foundation own works. He has exhibited<br />
in eight BP Portrait Award Exhibitions and<br />
twice won the BP Visitors’ Choice Award.<br />
Benney’s portrait subjects have included HM<br />
Queen Elizabeth II, Sir Mick Jagger, John<br />
Paul Getty III, 7th Marquess of Bath, The<br />
State Portrait for Israel, Lord Rothschild,<br />
as well as Ben Barnes for the portrait in<br />
the feature film ‘A Portrait of Dorian Grey’.<br />
Benney was invited to be resident artist<br />
at Somerset House in 2010. During his<br />
five year residency he held the exhibition<br />
‘Night Paintings’ in 2012 and drew over<br />
15,000 visitors. In 2017 his epic painting<br />
and holosonic sound installation ‘Speaking<br />
in Tongues’ was a prominent feature of the<br />
Venice Biennale.<br />
Deposition (Corpus Delicti Series)<br />
oil on canvas, 210 x 135 cm<br />
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Carlos Zapata (b. 1963)<br />
Carlos Zapata predominately makes<br />
idiosyncratic carved and painted wooden<br />
sculpture alongside mixed media<br />
installation. His work deals with many<br />
challenging and potent humanist themes<br />
including poverty, conflict, religion<br />
and race, yet perhaps paradoxically, the<br />
overriding characteristics of the work are of<br />
emotive empathy and compassion. Zapata’s<br />
work belongs to and takes inspiration from<br />
folk and tribal artforms from all over the<br />
world but specifically from South America,<br />
from its indigenous populace and the<br />
trade routes and traditions that have fed it<br />
over the centuries. Many of his sculptures<br />
have evolved from personal experience of<br />
living in a foreign land and from his home<br />
country where civil issues continue to<br />
trouble its people.<br />
Carlos Zapata is a Colombian artist who<br />
currently lives and works near Falmouth in<br />
Cornwall, UK. He has exhibited extensively<br />
internationally with works held in numerous<br />
private and museum collections around<br />
the world.<br />
Ecstacy<br />
polychrome wood and mixed media, 30 x 6 x 5 cm<br />
15
Henry Hussey (b. 1990)<br />
Henry Hussey’s artworks are often<br />
emotionally and physically raw, yet<br />
contrastingly beautiful and intricate, created<br />
with force through often paradoxically<br />
laboured mediums, including textile,<br />
glass, ceramic, paint and film. Whether<br />
through an expanding vocabulary of quasimythological<br />
symbols, or in embellished<br />
lines of text extracted from performative<br />
situations, Hussey explores personal and<br />
national identity in response to aggravating<br />
relationships and events. Recent<br />
experimentations reveal a deep concern<br />
with control and chaos and the sweet spot<br />
in between these two distinctive states.<br />
Henry Hussey is a British artist born in<br />
London in 1990 where he still resides.<br />
Hussey studied Textiles at Chelsea College<br />
of Art before completing an MA in Textiles<br />
at the Royal College of Art. His work is<br />
widely respected and has been exhibited<br />
in notable exhibitions including The<br />
Textiel Biennale 2017 at Museum Rijswijk<br />
in the Hague, a solo presentation at Art<br />
Central in Hong Kong, the Bloomberg New<br />
Contemporaries in 2014 at the Institute of<br />
Contemporary Art in London, the Royal<br />
Academy London and Volta New York and<br />
the Young Talent Contemporary Prize at<br />
the Ingram Collection in 2016. Hussey has<br />
participated in residencies at La Vallonea,<br />
Tuscany, Italy in 2018 and participated<br />
in a residency at Palazzo Monti, Milan<br />
in 2020. His work is held in collections<br />
worldwide including Simmons & Simmons,<br />
Hogan Lovells, The Groucho Club and<br />
Soho House.<br />
Bleed Me Dry<br />
digitally printed linen & canvas, dyed hessian & yarn, bleached velvet, screen-print, embroidery, 260 x 130 cm<br />
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Arthur Lanyon (b. 1985)<br />
Arthur Lanyon paintings combine intuitive<br />
figurative motifs with an emotive, gestural,<br />
abstracted language. His energetic works<br />
are sited on a physical and metaphysical<br />
cross roads, like a belay between numerous<br />
visual and emotional pinnacles. They offer<br />
a progressive link between the outside<br />
world, the inner architecture of the<br />
brain, altered states of consciousness,<br />
memory and the unencumbered essence of<br />
child’s drawing.<br />
Arthur Lanyon is a British artist born<br />
in Leicester, England in 1985. He lives<br />
and works from a studio near Penzance,<br />
Cornwall. Born in to an artistic family, his<br />
father was the painter Matthew Lanyon and<br />
his grandfather the celebrated, influential<br />
and world renowned modernist painter<br />
Peter Lanyon. He won the Hans Brinker<br />
Painting Award in Amsterdam in 2007 and<br />
gained a first class degree in Fine Art<br />
from Cardiff University in 2008. Upon<br />
graduating he was featured in Saatchi’s<br />
‘New Sensations’ exhibition. In 2014,<br />
his work was in the long-list for the<br />
Aesthetica Art Prize and was included in<br />
the award’s published anthology. His debut<br />
Anima Mundi solo exhibition ‘Return<br />
to Whale’ opened in 2016, which was<br />
followed by ‘White Chalk Lines in 2018,<br />
‘Arcade Laundry’ in 2020 and ‘Coda for an<br />
Obol’ in 2022. Works have been exhibited<br />
extensively, notably including Untitled Art<br />
Fair in Miami; Zona Maco, Mexico City;<br />
the Saatchi Gallery London; The House of<br />
St Barnabas, London; CGK, Copenhagen;<br />
Tat Art, Barcelona and Herrick Gallery,<br />
Mayfair. Arthur Lanyon paintings are held<br />
in private collections worldwide.<br />
House Hat<br />
oil, oil stick, spray paint, charcoal on linen, 190 x 200 cm<br />
19
Miles Cleveland Goodwin (b. 1980)<br />
Miles Cleveland Goodwin’s upbringing<br />
in the American South is a recurring<br />
theme in his brooding paintings and<br />
sculptures. Goodwin draws parallels<br />
between the people he portrays, the<br />
rhythm of their rural ways of life, and<br />
the rugged landscapes that they inhabit.<br />
The artist frequently evokes themes of<br />
mortality, decay and solitude with a sense<br />
of phantasmagoric realism combined<br />
with a haunting stillness. Goodwin’s<br />
‘Southern Gothic’ works conjure the<br />
ambivalent beauty of a place that is both<br />
simultaneously desolate yet deeply soulful.<br />
Goodwin lives and works in Georgia, USA.<br />
He graduated from the Pacific Northwest<br />
College of Art in Oregon in 2007 with a<br />
BFA in painting and printmaking. His work<br />
has been featured in group exhibitions<br />
at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, the<br />
Grace Museum and the Amarillo Museum<br />
of Art among others and can be found in<br />
collections worldwide.<br />
Lucifer<br />
oil on canvas, 81 x 79 cm<br />
20
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Andrew Hardwick (b. 1961)<br />
Andrew Hardwick’s often large scale,<br />
sedimentary paintings display his captivation<br />
with ever decreasing wilderness zones; both<br />
natural and man-made. Playing with and<br />
subverting traditional notions of romantic<br />
landscape painting and the sublime. The<br />
paintings often depict edge-land zones<br />
around big industrial conurbations or ports,<br />
such as large-scale car storage compounds,<br />
redundant factories and polluted waste<br />
lands. Other works draw inspiration from<br />
the more typically idyllic locations such as<br />
Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor. However, these<br />
landscapes are also filled with reminders<br />
of human interference. Roads criss-cross<br />
the moor in deeply scratched lines, a<br />
narrow road is etched into an otherwise<br />
massive moorland triptych, likewise a real<br />
car radiator sits in the surface of another<br />
painting as if decaying and buried by<br />
the earth. His medium of working is also<br />
atypical, paintings are heavily layered with<br />
different types of paint (often sourced<br />
from recycling centres), plaster, plastics,<br />
soils, pigments, roofing felt, hay and<br />
other unconventional materials. To this<br />
rich surface relevant artefacts are often<br />
added, creating reminders, triggering<br />
memories or reflecting fears intrinsic to<br />
a particular landscape. The concept of<br />
layering in the landscape arrived partly<br />
a result of the artist’s childhood, during<br />
which his family’s farm was first sliced<br />
in half by the M5 motorway and then<br />
again by the Royal Portbury Dock. The<br />
land once filled with sheep has become a<br />
pure edge-land wilderness with detritus<br />
of continuous development now occupying<br />
and obliterating the land. Hardwick’s<br />
entire oeuvre makes reference to concepts<br />
of change, memory, history, emotion and<br />
transience. Ever redolent is the notion that<br />
we are but another layer in time.<br />
Andrew Hardwick is a British artist born<br />
in Bristol, England in 1961 where he still<br />
resides. He achieved an MA in Fine Art at<br />
the University of Wales. He is an elected<br />
Academician at the Royal West of England<br />
Academy. He has featured in four solo<br />
exhibitions at Anima Mundi. Works have<br />
been exhibited extensively including<br />
numerous public shows and have been<br />
collected worldwide.<br />
Island, Estuary<br />
mixed media on panels, 112 x 208 cm<br />
23
Sax Impey (b. 1969)<br />
Sax Impey’s artworks are often large scale,<br />
immersive and elemental, incorporating<br />
intense detail and dexterity and an<br />
expressive, behavioural use of medium.<br />
Since 2005, Impey has produced works<br />
derived predominantly from experiences<br />
at sea. A qualified RYA Yachtmaster he has<br />
sailed many thousands of miles around the<br />
world. His journeys have had a profound<br />
impact and subsequent development as an<br />
artist. Reconnecting with nature through<br />
this powerful element has the almost<br />
inescapable effect of calling to question<br />
many of life’s existential questions. This<br />
epiphanic moment of realisation, of<br />
revelation, is at the core of Impey’s oeuvre.<br />
Reflecting on and capturing personal<br />
moments and making them universal,<br />
Impey’s work reaffirms the importance<br />
of introspection and confrontation, found<br />
specifically when surrounded by the natural<br />
world; “A mind can breathe, and observe,<br />
and reflect, away from the shrill desperation<br />
of a culture that, having forgotten that it is<br />
better to say nothing than something about<br />
nothing, invents ever new ways to fill<br />
every single space with less and less”.<br />
Impey was born in Penzance, Cornwall. He<br />
currently works from one of the prestigious<br />
Porthmeor Studios in St. Ives. From 2005,<br />
he has collaborated with the cross-cultural,<br />
environmental art group Red Earth. In 2007<br />
Impey’s work was selected for the ‘Art Now<br />
Cornwall’ exhibition at Tate St Ives where<br />
he was placed on the cover of the associated<br />
publication. The same year he was heralded<br />
in The Times as one of the ‘New Faces<br />
of Cornish Art’. In 2010 he was featured<br />
in Owen Sheers’s BBC4 Documentary<br />
‘Art of the Sea (In Pictures)’ alongside<br />
Anish Kapoor, J. M. W. Turner, Martin Parr<br />
and Maggi Hambling among others. His<br />
work was selected as a finalist the 2013<br />
Threadneedle Prize and the year before<br />
was elected an Academician at the Royal<br />
West of England Academy. His paintings<br />
are in multiple collections including The<br />
Arts Council, Warwick University and the<br />
Connaught Hotel.<br />
Reason<br />
mixed media on panel, 122 x 183 cm<br />
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Gabrielle K Brown (b. 1994)<br />
Embodying a natural and intuitive,<br />
seemingly naive, yet extremely complex<br />
aesthetic, Gabrielle K Brown is a multifaceted,<br />
multi-media artist who eagerly and<br />
energetically seeks new ways to tell stories<br />
through her artworks. Her pieces retain an<br />
object, often shrine-like quality, utilising<br />
materials including wood, various paints,<br />
resin, fabrics and even hair - nothing<br />
is beyond limits. The works dissect the<br />
relationship we have with ourselves, our<br />
companions, our society and our past with<br />
an awe and celebration of nature and<br />
the divine, shedding light on how we<br />
grow and how we suffer as human beings.<br />
Confrontational imagery is often contrasted<br />
with uplifting symbolism, actions and<br />
words - emphasising the extremes of the<br />
human condition and experience, and<br />
yearning within the energetic and fraught<br />
times that we live in.<br />
Born in 1994 on the east coast of Canada in<br />
New Brunswick, Brown grew up along the<br />
riverside and mountains which is where she<br />
connected to art and began painting and<br />
sculpting. She has spent much of her life<br />
traveling the world and moving throughout<br />
Canada which has always reflected in her<br />
work, but has recently moved back home to<br />
St John, the oldest city in Canada.Work has<br />
been exhibited at Art Basel Miami, as well<br />
as Montreal and New York and LA in the<br />
United States.<br />
The Only Lord and Saviour Who is Gonna Save You Is You<br />
mixed media, 48 x 28 cm<br />
27
Luke Frost (b. 1976)<br />
Luke Frost is a British abstract painter<br />
living and working in West Cornwall.<br />
Despite his notable heritage, as Son of<br />
the English painter Anthony Frost and<br />
the Grandson of the celebrated Modernist<br />
painter Sir Terry Frost, his paintings could<br />
be seen to instead echo a formality found in<br />
1960s American hard-edge, post-painterly,<br />
abstraction. However Frost has developed<br />
his own means of exploring complex<br />
colour relationships, be they harmonious<br />
or provocative, and their impact on their<br />
surroundings alongside an internal and<br />
more contemplative space.<br />
Frost began exhibiting in 2003 following<br />
studies at Falmouth and Bath Schools<br />
of Art. His work was featured in ‘Art<br />
Now Cornwall’ at Tate St Ives in 2007<br />
and in 2008 he was awarded a Tate St<br />
Ives artist in residency during which<br />
time he worked at Porthmeor Studio No.<br />
5, formerly occupied by Ben Nicholson<br />
and Patrick Heron. His solo exhibition<br />
‘Paintings in Five Dimensions’ was shown<br />
at Tate St Ives in 2009. He has since<br />
exhibited in Cornwall, London and USA,<br />
with essays written on his work by Matthew<br />
Collings, Tony Godfrey and Michael Klein.<br />
Deep Cobalt, Grey Volts<br />
acrylic on aluminium, 53 x 36 cm<br />
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Pale Cerulean & Cobalt Blue Volts<br />
acrylic on aluminium, 70 x 45 cm<br />
31
Efrat Merin (b. 1989)<br />
Efrat Merin is an artist working across<br />
multiple mediums, mainly painting, drawing<br />
and filmmaking. Her works set forth a<br />
retelling of mythical narratives. Gorgons,<br />
witches, hybrids, and hermaphrodites<br />
fuse into an image of subconsciousness.<br />
Nakedness is disengaged from sexuality,<br />
binaries of femininity and masculinity are<br />
transgressed. Female desire, with its long<br />
history of being demonised, is unabashedly<br />
celebrated; the female gaze regains its<br />
power. In recent works, she uses the<br />
sgraffito technique, in which parts of the<br />
surface are scratched and removed, thus<br />
exposing the layer underneath. The use of<br />
cold encaustic paint, readily accepts every<br />
mark. Revealing rather than adding, to this<br />
archaeological-like process which endows<br />
the works with a quality of discovery.<br />
Merin was born in Tel Aviv and currently<br />
lives in London. She completed her<br />
BA in Fine Art at Hamidrasha Faculty<br />
of the Arts, Beit Berl College in Israel<br />
and was recently a participant in Turps<br />
Studio Programme. Awards include an<br />
upcoming residency at Van Gogh AIR,<br />
Zundert, NL; the Darbyshire Award for<br />
Emerging Art; Artist-in-Residence at Frans<br />
Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee; Brixton Art<br />
Prize (Shortlisted); Jackson’s Art Prize<br />
(shortlisted) and Alpine Fellowship Visual<br />
Art Prize (shortlisted). She is included in<br />
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2023.<br />
Transmutations<br />
cold encaustic on panel, 110 cm diameter<br />
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Lilith & Eve in One of the Possible Worlds<br />
cold encaustic on panel, 110 x 110 cm<br />
34
Birth of Lilith as an Androginous Time Traveller<br />
cold encaustic on panel, 110 x 110 cm<br />
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Jim Carter (b. 1975)<br />
Often uneasy or tragic, irrational or other,<br />
Jim Carter’s work is linked to a real world<br />
of suffering and transcendence: making<br />
sculpture from organic materials as a means<br />
of advocacy, atonement or commemoration;<br />
shifting to story and the written word as<br />
a way to enter emotional and numinous<br />
spaces of memory and dream. What appears<br />
on the surface to be a wilful disturbance of<br />
the remains of organic life in order to fulfil<br />
a creative compulsion is intended to be<br />
part of a transforming and re-sanctifying<br />
process. Taken materials are reconfigured<br />
into new forms to express complex feelings<br />
of grief and loss, love and devotion, fertility<br />
and renewal. Fundamental in this work is a<br />
conviction in an irrepressible spirit for<br />
regeneration in the world, an imperishable<br />
flame that rises most clearly in landscape<br />
and the magic and otherness of animals.<br />
Carter was born in Worcestershire in 1967.<br />
He received an MA with distinction in Art<br />
and Environment from Falmouth University<br />
and an MSc Award in Ecopsychology from<br />
the Centre For Human Ecology, Edinburgh.<br />
His work has appeared in Dark Mountain,<br />
Unpsychology and Earthlines magazine.<br />
Cygnus Shapes the Summer King<br />
wood, magpie & jackdaw feathers, earth, blood, alder & black poplar catkins, wool, deer & fox hair, 24 x 14 x 8 cm<br />
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Chris Anthem (b. 1974)<br />
Chris Anthem is a British artist. He has<br />
strong links to Lebanon and East Africa,<br />
living and painting in Sudan for the past<br />
4 years, and more recently in Mauritania<br />
and Senegal. Anthem studied fine art in<br />
Liverpool and then the Slade School of<br />
Fine Art London. Projects have included<br />
painting dresses for Basil Soda Haute<br />
Couture and The Budapest Art Factory<br />
Residency. He is presently researching<br />
a new body of work in Dakar, Senegal.<br />
“The mark has an ambiguous nature; on<br />
the one hand pertaining to be other than<br />
its material actuality, whilst it still offers<br />
the possibility of being congruent with<br />
an honesty of spirit. I recognise that<br />
honesty in artworks when I’ve managed<br />
to keep its energy there. In some works<br />
that honesty dies, it gets lost in its own<br />
rhetoric and the energy dies, or rather the<br />
works commit their own clichéd suicide,<br />
stillborn in the cowl glister of varnish.<br />
It still surprises me that honesty and<br />
mortality are still so co-dependent and<br />
that short-cuts of effect kill paintings.<br />
Every successful artwork that I’ve done has<br />
had at its core a tangible event, something<br />
unresolved and nagging to get itched. That<br />
before the idea, the internal image, before<br />
the composition and the stitching of sources<br />
and technique there is the event. In the<br />
painting, in spite of its seductive surfaces<br />
and its neurotic baroque, there lies some<br />
tender actuality that only a pencil, or brush<br />
and oil would soothe, and only a humility<br />
of mark can address. The materials are the<br />
salve that cures the surface – balm of a<br />
meglip scab. And I guess it’s that rupture,<br />
that intrusion on the surface tension on<br />
the canvas; or paper, or mind, or body, that<br />
the rest of the painting dresses – like you<br />
would, whether functionally or theatrically,<br />
a wound.”<br />
The Telling of Adji Sarr<br />
charcoal and chalk on paper, 160 x 120 cm<br />
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Kate Clark (b. 1972)<br />
Kate Clark’s sculptures invite the viewer to<br />
experience an instinctive and primal reaction,<br />
that encourages further examination of our<br />
own humanity. Stitched over a hand-sculpted<br />
human face, the material quality of her ethically<br />
sourced animal hide brings an authenticity to<br />
the final sculpture, through what the artist<br />
describes as a unique energy and presence.<br />
We identify with animals through both our<br />
connection with and separation from them.<br />
Recognising these contradictions, Clark’s<br />
fusion of human and animal suggests that our<br />
human condition is fully realised only when<br />
we acknowledge and reconcile our current<br />
state and our natural instincts, acknowledging<br />
the animalistic inheritance within the human<br />
condition. She achieves this through emphasis<br />
on the characteristics that differentiate us<br />
from the rest of the animal kingdom, and,<br />
importantly, the ones that unite us.<br />
Kate Clark lives and works in Brooklyn, New<br />
York. She attended Cornell University for her<br />
BFA and Cranbrook Academy of Art for her<br />
MFA and has been awarded fellowships from the<br />
Jentel Artists Residency in Wyoming, The Fine<br />
Arts Work Center Residency in Provincetown,<br />
MA, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio<br />
Program in New York. Clark was nominated<br />
for a USA Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany<br />
Award and an American Academy of Arts<br />
and Letters award. She was awarded a grant<br />
from The Virginia Groot Foundation in 2013<br />
and a New York Foundation For the Arts<br />
(NYFA) Fellowship Award in 2014. Clark has<br />
exhibited in solo museum exhibitions at the<br />
Mobile Museum of Art, The Newcomb Art<br />
Museum and the Hilliard Museum and in group<br />
museum exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of<br />
Contemporary Art, The Islip Art Museum, and<br />
The Bellevue Arts Museum, MOFA: Florida<br />
State University, Cranbrook Art Museum, Frist<br />
Center for the Visual Arts, The Winnepeg Art<br />
Gallery, the Glenbow Museum, the Musée de<br />
la Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, The Art Gallery at<br />
Cleveland State University, the Hudson Valley<br />
Center for Contemporary Art, the Nevada<br />
Museum of Art, the David Winton Bell Gallery<br />
at Brown University, the Bemis Center for<br />
Contemporary Arts, the Biggs Museum of<br />
American Art, the Royal Melbourne Institute<br />
of Technology, and the J. Paul Getty Museum.<br />
Her work is collected internationally and is in<br />
public collections such as the JP Morgan Chase<br />
Art Collection, the 21c Collection, the David<br />
Roberts Art Foundation and the C-Collection<br />
in Switzerland. Clark’s sculptures have been<br />
featured in the Wall Street Journal, New<br />
York Times, New York Magazine, Art21:Blog,<br />
The Village Voice, PAPERmag, The Atlantic,<br />
Hyperallergic, NYArts, Huffington Post, Hi<br />
Fructose, the BBC World News Brazil, Hey!<br />
Magazine, Time Out, ID Paris, Cool Hunting,<br />
Wallpaper, Creators Project/VICE, Sculpture<br />
Review and many other publications.<br />
In addition she was filmed by National<br />
Geographic in her studio over a 2 month<br />
period for a short documentary about her work.<br />
Don’t Break the Spell<br />
spanish goat, horns, clay, foam, thread, pins, rubber eyes, wood, 66 x 50 x 30 cm<br />
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Sam Lock (b. 1973)<br />
Sam Lock’s considered and expressive,<br />
often large scale, abstract paintings embrace<br />
the principle that change is a process not<br />
an event. A meditation on the continual<br />
flow and movement both around us and<br />
within us inspires each gesture. They are<br />
not made with a system or fixed process<br />
but through an energy that embraces both<br />
change and chance, in a manner that is<br />
both organic and unscripted, following its<br />
own path until there is a balance between<br />
presence and absence. There are silences<br />
and hiding places that are both poetic and<br />
activating, and a physicality and immediacy,<br />
where his aim to ‘submit’ himself to the<br />
canvas, eliminates extraneous thought in<br />
order to guarantee a purity of response.<br />
A response arising through concentration<br />
and intuition where thought and action, go<br />
hand-in-hand. This is what Lock refers to<br />
as the ‘poetry of moments’, of the spiritual<br />
nature of now becoming then, and how<br />
what started as waves of actions, becomes<br />
a forest of memory. Lock is interested<br />
in marks, resulting in paintings, that<br />
communicate both instantly and slowly - to<br />
slow down perception, and to create forms<br />
that don’t reveal themselves fully, all at<br />
once, through a filling up and emptying<br />
of space and surface; traces and echoes<br />
exist in a palimpsest, a build-up of painted<br />
marks, layers and statements that conceal<br />
and reveal, where time becomes held in<br />
a concrete way and the painting achieves<br />
a physical weight and substance. These<br />
layers allow you to swim in and out of the<br />
painting, they lead back in time, retaining<br />
a mystery and dynamism of the moment<br />
rather than a recollection of a misty<br />
lost past.<br />
Sam Lock was born in London and now<br />
lives and works near Brighton with his<br />
studio in a converted industrial unit further<br />
up the coast. Lock studied at Edinburgh<br />
College of Art and Edinburgh University,<br />
graduating in 1997 with MA’s in both Fine<br />
Art and Art History. During his training,<br />
he won a scholarship to travel to Rome,<br />
and explore the relationship between<br />
history, archaeology and the processes<br />
of painting, a preoccupation which still<br />
forms the conceptual basis that underpins<br />
his practice.<br />
Peak Line<br />
mixed media on canvas, 240 x 150 cm<br />
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Marianne Walker (b. 1970)<br />
Marianne Walker makes three-dimensional<br />
drawings that are heavily informed by the<br />
material remains of the past. She uses<br />
paper-clay to make fragmentary body parts<br />
that she then draws across using ink and<br />
pencil. She see’s drawing as a process<br />
of materialisation, a dynamic enlivening<br />
that infuses potency and presence into<br />
the work. Her objective is to escape<br />
the rectangular page and push the twodimensional<br />
medium of drawing into<br />
becoming a three-dimensional entity that<br />
can further confront the viewer.<br />
Marianne Walker was born and raised in<br />
Yorkshire, then Hong Kong. She now lives<br />
and works in London. She gained an MA<br />
in Sculpture from Wimbledon College of<br />
Art and received the Observer Magazine<br />
New British Artist Award for her final<br />
exhibition. Her work has been featured<br />
in national and international exhibitions<br />
including the Jerwood Drawing Prize,<br />
Romantic Detachment (PS1, Moma New<br />
York), Contemporary British Drawing 2015<br />
(Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts, China) and<br />
Artworks Open 2018 (Barbican Arts Group).<br />
Foremothers Feet<br />
ink and pencil on sculpted paperclay, 25 x 25 x 5 cm<br />
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Faye Eleanor Woods (b. 1998)<br />
Faye Eleanor Woods is a Scottish artist<br />
currently living and working in West<br />
Yorkshire. Her symbolic artwork acts as a<br />
love letter to her own experience, full of<br />
life’s joy, absurdity, humour, loss and fear.<br />
Recent works explore her own personal<br />
journey through grief, one she describes<br />
as dark, weepy and often hilarious. She<br />
hails her work as a tangilble form of inner<br />
catharsis. Using raw pigments and acrylic<br />
ink she forces rich colour into the grain<br />
of the canvas, blurring edges with copious<br />
amounts of water or using thin layers of oil<br />
to blend the figures with their backgrounds<br />
creating an ethereal presence. As Woods<br />
says “I try to bring attention to the surreal<br />
aspects of life and the way the oddness of<br />
experience manifests within individuals and<br />
how that manifestation then affects me. In<br />
my vulnerability I crave strange moments of<br />
intimacy. I imagine drinking straight from<br />
the tap of all emotion, drinking so much<br />
of it, I take on too much and I’m sick and<br />
everything I spew out ends up in my work.”<br />
I Have Sold My Soul For This Pint & I Have No Regrets<br />
raw pigment, acrylic ink and oil on canvas, 167 x 304 cm<br />
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Jackson Whitefield (1991)<br />
Mild steel forms were buried, embedded or<br />
secured to the earth at various pertinent<br />
sites and left to be imprinted by the<br />
elements. After a three month period the<br />
steel shapes were photographed, removed<br />
and then etched to paper. These forms are<br />
presented alongside photographic images<br />
of the sites where each form was left<br />
to weather.<br />
Jackson Whitefield is a British artist born in<br />
St. Ives, Cornwall in 1991. Whitefield works<br />
with a diverse range of media including<br />
photography, film, drawing, book making<br />
and site-specific earthworks. Themes which<br />
run through his work include geology,<br />
anthropology, process and language. While<br />
his choice of media and interests are<br />
diverse, his inspiration is rooted firmly<br />
in his immediate surroundings. Always<br />
allowing his environment to lead his<br />
immediate enquiry his approach to making<br />
the work is more about reacting and<br />
engaging with the subject rather than<br />
seeking out ideas that were already formed<br />
in the mind.<br />
Imprint III<br />
etching on paper with silver gelatin prints in polished aluminium frame, 87 x 91 cm<br />
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Laurence Edwards (b .1967)<br />
Laurence Edwards’ sculptural practice<br />
has long been concerned with the<br />
physical and metaphysical, orderly and<br />
entropic, entwining of man, nature and<br />
time. Organic matter is often built into<br />
the casting process, perhaps a detritus<br />
of leaves, branches, stone and / or rope.<br />
One of the few sculptors who casts<br />
his own work, he is fascinated by the<br />
metamorphosis of form and matter that<br />
governs the lost-wax process which is<br />
an inherent part of his process. It is a<br />
method of working which also registers<br />
symbolically and conceptually. His<br />
primary working material is bronze, an<br />
alloy that physically and metaphorically<br />
illustrates the natural tendency of<br />
any system in time to tend towards<br />
disorder and chaos. His sculptures<br />
express this raw material potential,<br />
harnessing molten liquid versatility to<br />
achieve solid mass. Each process mark<br />
is both embraced and retained, telling<br />
the story of how and why each work<br />
came to be.<br />
Based in Suffolk, Edwards studied<br />
sculpture at Canterbury College of Art<br />
and bronze casting at the Royal College<br />
of Art with Sir Antony Caro. After<br />
winning a Henry Moore Bursary, the<br />
Angeloni Prize for Bronze Casting and<br />
an Intach Travelling Scholarship, he<br />
studied traditional casting techniques<br />
in India and Nepal, an experience that<br />
not only influenced his treatment of<br />
form and technique, but also gave him<br />
the necessary tools to establish his<br />
own atelier and foundry. In November<br />
2019, ‘Man of Stones’ was unveiled<br />
at the Sainsbury Centre in Norfolk.<br />
In 2018, Edwards was commissioned<br />
by Doncaster Council to create a<br />
sculpture that celebrates the lives of<br />
those who worked in the collieries<br />
around Doncaster. ‘A Rich Seam’ was<br />
unveiled in Print Office Street in 2021.<br />
In November 2021, Edwards installed<br />
a 26-foot-high sculpture, alongside<br />
the A12 highway in Suffolk, called<br />
‘Yoxman’. This colossal figure embodies<br />
his fascination between the human<br />
figure and the environment; he is part<br />
tree, cove, cliff and figure. In February<br />
2023 “A Gathering of Uncertainties”<br />
a solo exhibition of large scale works<br />
and studies opened at Orange Regional<br />
Museum, NSW, Australia. In May 2023<br />
“Five Walking Men” on loan from the<br />
Nock Art Foundation New Zealand<br />
where unveiled on the new extension<br />
to the Art Gallery of New South<br />
Wales. Edwards is represented by<br />
Messums Wiltshire.<br />
Gathering of Uncertainties<br />
bronze (edition of 12), 100 x 100 x 65 cm<br />
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Katie Sims (b. 1988)<br />
Painting, for Katie Sims, is the closest<br />
thing to an act of communion. Her work<br />
reinforces the complexities of engagement,<br />
of seeing beyond first appearances and<br />
in questioning the origins and absolutes<br />
presented. Constraints are an integral part<br />
of her process, from a conceptual, painterly<br />
and physical stance. These limitations help<br />
her pare back to the essential, towards a<br />
directness of emotional statement and to<br />
silence; the silence the process facilitates<br />
and the silence the work is trying to get<br />
at. It is a simplifying, but not in the sense<br />
as to reduce complexity for it is layered<br />
with complexity and thus demands more<br />
from the viewer. Maintaining a balance<br />
around the transition point requires great<br />
focus akin to any devotional practice. The<br />
repetition and movement between prior<br />
intention and intention-in-action supports<br />
the virtues of listening and humility<br />
as she ‘assists’ something into being.<br />
Her work is a process that leads to a resolve.<br />
She places herself in an in-between space,<br />
between two opposing poles, challenging<br />
what resolve is through the middle ground<br />
until these two states are in a complete<br />
tension. Each resolution is different;<br />
chromatically, compositionally, through<br />
colour or light, yet each involves a circular<br />
dialogue of adding and removing. Thus<br />
her resolve sustains an instability of form,<br />
which manifests as hesitant and uncertain<br />
of itself. Sims sees this liminal space as the<br />
place where distinctions dissolve and the<br />
best opportunity for renewal is found. It is<br />
a fluid, malleable situation that enables new<br />
customs and identities to be unconcealed.<br />
Katie Sims was born in Shropshire, England<br />
in 1988 and currently lives and works on the<br />
small island of Gozo, Malta. Her paintings<br />
have been exhibited internationally and<br />
can be found in collections worldwide.<br />
The Green Ray<br />
oil on panel, 30 x 24 cm<br />
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Massimo Angei (b. 1962)<br />
Massimo Angèi’s elemental, tempestuous<br />
yet ethereal oil paintings reflect varied<br />
emotional states whilst remaining open to<br />
physical and metaphysical interpretation.<br />
Tableaus and forms are suggested but<br />
never fully established, perhaps evoking<br />
landscape, weather patterns, natural<br />
systems, inner psychology or spiritual<br />
connectedness. Voluptuous cloud-like<br />
billows intersperse with delicate spiralling<br />
marks forming an ecstatic unity reminiscent<br />
of both renaissance grandeur and primitive<br />
automatic drawing.<br />
Massimo Angèi was born in La Spezia, Italy,<br />
he currently lives and works in Sarzana,<br />
near the borderline between Liguria<br />
and Tuscany. Following art school, he<br />
collaborated with various institutions and<br />
museums exhibiting early representational<br />
depictions of flora and fauna. After finishing<br />
his degree at the Fine Arts Academy in<br />
Carrara/Painting (Accademia di Belle<br />
Arti\Pittura), he participated in his first<br />
exhibitions, and the creation of the Idioma<br />
group along with Marco Casentini, Fabio<br />
Linari, Jacopo Bruno, Andrea Geremia.<br />
He then began to work as an independent<br />
freelance photographer working for photo<br />
agencies including Grazia Neri of Milan,<br />
and Bilderberg of Hamburg, publishing his<br />
images in both Italian and international<br />
magazines. A vivid dream in the spring of<br />
2006 made him realise that his destiny was<br />
as a painter, and he vowed to never again<br />
abandon it.<br />
Il suono delle piante che crescono (The sound of Growing Plants)<br />
oil on board, 80 x 70 cm<br />
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Judith Nangala Crispin (b. 1970)<br />
Judith Nangala Crispin is an Australian visual<br />
artist, poet and musician, and a descendant of<br />
Bpangerang people of North East Victoria. Her<br />
skin name, Nangala, was given to her by the<br />
Warlpiri people of the remote Tanami Desert<br />
in northern Australia, a place she has lived<br />
for a few months each year for over a decade.<br />
Her work includes themes of displacement<br />
and identity loss, a reflection on her ancestry,<br />
but it is primarily centred on the concept of<br />
connection with the land. This work forms<br />
a part of Crispin’s ongoing series depicting<br />
the transcendent ascending forms of recently<br />
deceased fauna. Crispin’s camera-less method<br />
of photography incorporates a range of<br />
processes. Her own developed alternative<br />
process of ‘lumachrome glass printing’,<br />
combines elements of lumen printing, cliché<br />
verre, chemical alchemy and drawing. She<br />
works within a mobile geodesic dome which<br />
functions as a giant lens where light streams<br />
penetrate its plastic walls. The mobility of<br />
her studio allows her to go to the site of her<br />
subject, prior to respectful burial. The muse,<br />
is raised onto a plastic box, rested on special<br />
photographic paper for up to 50 hours as the<br />
passage of sun and moonlight exposes its<br />
posthumous portrait. Each work is viewed as<br />
a collaboration with nature, where honouring<br />
the subject is a key objective. In each work<br />
the animals are diaphanous where light has<br />
literally passed through their bodies. They<br />
appear drawn in a primitive motion by a<br />
slipstream of spirit, levitating in a space of<br />
brooding luminosity that appears sentient<br />
and wholly focused on the task of enfolding<br />
each creature back into its care. The result<br />
offers a profound sense of what lies beyond.<br />
Nangala Crispin has published a collection of<br />
poetry, The Myrrh-Bearers (Sydney: Puncher<br />
& Wattmann, 2015), and a book of images and<br />
poems made while living with the Warlpiri,<br />
The Lumen Seed (New York: Daylight Books,<br />
2017). She is a member of Oculi collective, one<br />
of the chapter leads of Women Photograph<br />
(Sydney), and was the 2021 Artist in residence<br />
with Music Viva. She is also the Poetry<br />
Editor for The Canberra Times. She has<br />
also directed and worked on two major<br />
social justice research projects – The Julfa<br />
Project, which preserved photographic<br />
records of a destroyed Armenian cemetery<br />
and digitally reconstructed the site from<br />
new and existing images; and Kurdiji 1.0, an<br />
Aboriginal suicide prevention app, which<br />
strengthens resilience in young indigenous<br />
people by reconnecting them with community<br />
and culture. Nangala Crispin work has been<br />
exhibited internationally.<br />
Cordelia, formless in a clear winter night, watched new trees germinate and spread their roots out<br />
from her discarded rex hare form, like forked lightning<br />
Lumachrome glass print, cliche-verre, chemigram, electroplating and drawing. Fox-killed rex hare on<br />
fibre paper, with seeds, acid, copper chloride, wax resists and electric current. Exposed 54 hours in<br />
an abandoned car. Re-exposed 23 hours in filtered UV light, electric current, acid & mixed chlorides.<br />
re-printed as a single image, detailed with gold and silver leaf, 150 x 115 cm<br />
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Roger Thorp (b. 1955)<br />
Roger Thorp is a British artist born<br />
in Derbyshire. He currently lives and<br />
works in Cornwall. He previously worked<br />
as a producer on music videos before<br />
directing / producing programmes for<br />
NGO’s such as WWF, ILO, Greenpeace<br />
and the Red Cross, working in Australia,<br />
Mongolia and the USA. He has also made<br />
two feature films. Other work by Thorp<br />
as a writer / director has been screened<br />
in Rome, Barcelona, Berlin, Oslo,<br />
Copenhagen, Istanbul, USA, Cornwall and<br />
London. In 2015 he founded ‘The Olive<br />
Network’ a sophisticated web platform<br />
built to foster tolerance and understanding<br />
throughout diverse global communities<br />
by focusing on the positive long-term<br />
contributions of charity, the arts and<br />
humanities. Thorp’s artwork has been<br />
exhibited extensively.<br />
The Shaman’s Tears<br />
single channel video (duration 01:17)<br />
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Simone Pellegrini (b. 1972)<br />
Simone Pellegrini’s visionary works appear<br />
as timeless artefacts describing complex<br />
systems of interconnectivity. The works are<br />
made through a process of pressing motifs,<br />
painted on to discarded paper fragments,<br />
on to a rich parchment-like paper, which is<br />
then hand-coloured and distressed with oil<br />
to create a rich and deep patination of age<br />
and wear. Their compositional arrangements<br />
echo an archaic sensibility, depicting<br />
dreamlike symbology and structures where<br />
figures float or wander either lost or found,<br />
consumed or enraptured. Whilst remaining<br />
cryptic Pellegrini’s paintings make tangible,<br />
more elusive philosophical, mystical and<br />
spiritual aspects of universal relatedness.<br />
Simone Pellegrini was born in Ancona,<br />
Italy in 1972, and he is currently based<br />
in Bologna, Italy. His works have been<br />
exhibited internationally and are in<br />
numerous public collections including the<br />
Museum of Modern Art in Bologna; the<br />
Civic Museum in Monza; Volker Feierabend<br />
in Frankfurt; Bologna Fiere; Maramotti<br />
Art Collection, Reggio Emilia; Unicredit<br />
Art Collection, Milan and Museum<br />
Kunstpalast Duesseldorf.<br />
Usuato droma<br />
mixed media on hand made paper, 93 x 180 cm<br />
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Dr Martin Shaw (b. 1959)<br />
Dr Martin Shaw tells stories and explored<br />
wild ideas about how myth used to be a<br />
kind of language that spoke-across-species.<br />
That myth itself can be a place where we<br />
witness not just narratives about the earth,<br />
but moments where the earth itself speaks<br />
through these stories. With inspirations<br />
ranging as far as Gaston Bachelard to Islamic<br />
Cosmology to the work of Joseph Beuys,<br />
Shaw celebrates electrifying storytelling and<br />
thought-stimulating ideas.<br />
Dr. Martin Shaw’s first book, ‘A Branch From<br />
The Lightning Tree’ was awarded the Nautilus<br />
prize for non-fiction, and was followed by<br />
‘Snowy Tower’ and ‘Scatterlings’ to complete<br />
a trilogy of works on mythology, landscape and<br />
the nature of soul. An international teacher,<br />
he has designed andLife’ courses at Stanford<br />
University, and, lead both the ‘Oral Tradition’<br />
and ‘Mythic Life’ courses at Stanford<br />
University and as a fellow of of Schumacher<br />
College in Devon, co-created their MA in<br />
Myth and Ecology. His school of independent<br />
scholars in mythopoetic’s and wilderness<br />
studies is just entering its fourteenth year.<br />
Recent collaborations have included Mark<br />
Rylance, Coleman Barks and David Abram. He<br />
is a painting scholar from The British School<br />
in Rome, and his translations of Gaelic and<br />
Welsh folklore (with Tony Hoagland) have<br />
been published in The Mississippi Review,<br />
Poetry International, Kenyon Review, Orion,<br />
and Poetry Magazine. 2018 will see the<br />
release of his new book, ‘Courting the Dawn:<br />
Poems of Lorca’ (with Stephan Harding), with<br />
several more in completion: all involving<br />
a revisioning of the word romanticism in<br />
the early twenty first century. is essay and<br />
conversation with Ai Weiwei on myth and<br />
migration was released by the Marciano<br />
Art Foundation.<br />
Sabbath Christ<br />
charcoal on paper, 30 x 21 cm<br />
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Alastair & Fleur Mackie (b. 1977)<br />
“When early humans ceased their nomadic<br />
existence as hunter-gatherers and settled down<br />
to cultivate the earth and produce food, they<br />
believed that the success of their labours was<br />
dependent on deities who would oversee the<br />
fruitfulness of their crops. In Britain it was<br />
believed that a spirit lived amongst the crop<br />
and that at harvest time it retreated before<br />
the oncoming reapers, taking refuge in the<br />
last of the standing corn. The final sheaf was<br />
personified, revered, and its fall marked with<br />
a formal ceremony and display. The sheaf<br />
was then fashioned into an effigy, a talisman<br />
believed to contain the spirit, and taken into<br />
the farmer’s home to be kept safe indoors<br />
throughout the winter, only to be returned to<br />
the earth with the coming of the new season.<br />
Giving the spirit a refuge during the dark<br />
and cold winter months was believed to ensure<br />
good luck for the forthcoming crop. In some<br />
cases the ‘trophy’ was burnt at the end of<br />
the winter as a way of releasing the spirit.<br />
As the earliest cultivated crops in human<br />
history, cereals continue to be among the most<br />
important food sources for us today. With a<br />
predicted world population of 9 billion by<br />
2050, demand is expected to increase by 60%<br />
while their vulnerability to climate change<br />
leaves us precariously exposed. In keeping<br />
with historical convention we took hold of the<br />
corn spirit and in collaboration with one of the<br />
few remaining true practitioners of the craft,<br />
produced a traditional spiral plait which, in<br />
turn, has been encased within a mould, burnt<br />
out, and cast. The remnant ash from the effigy<br />
has then been used to make ‘The New Season’.”<br />
Alastair and Fleur Mackie’s practice is<br />
one of contrasts. It is as labour-intensive<br />
as it is formally effortless, as grounded in<br />
ideas of nature as it is in the intrinsically<br />
human struggle to define a role within the<br />
environment; it is as intellectually ambitious<br />
as it is aesthetically understated. Alastair grew<br />
up in an agricultural community in Cornwall,<br />
UK while Fleur’s childhood was split between<br />
Cameroon, France, and the UK. They met<br />
at art school in London in the late 90’s.<br />
Initially their creative practices were separate,<br />
but over time their work has evolved into a<br />
natural collaboration. In 2011 they moved to<br />
live and work in Cornwall, the landscape of<br />
which has played a key role in the shaping<br />
of their vocabulary. Naturally occurring<br />
elements (native metals, wood, sea shells) are<br />
meticulously rearranged and transformed in a<br />
knowingly quixotic attempt to make sense of<br />
the primordial. Each work is something of an<br />
enigma, enriched by the loaded associations of<br />
its material and the story behind its making.<br />
Ally and Fleur operate by reduction; materials<br />
are pared down to their core. In their work,<br />
process dictates form, no matter how poetic or<br />
Romantic the piece’s origin. Alastair and Fleur<br />
Mackie have shown extensively in the UK and<br />
internationally, including exhibitions at the<br />
Saatchi Gallery in London, the Venice Biennale<br />
and the Reykjavik Art Museum. They have<br />
worked on a number of public commissions<br />
and their work is held in collections including<br />
The Olbricht Collection in Berlin, the Salsali<br />
Private Museum in Dubai and the Wellcome<br />
Collection in London.<br />
Cast<br />
bronze, steel, copper, 58 x 5 x 5 cm<br />
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The New Season<br />
ash retrieved from foundry mould of ‘Cast’, calico, wood, glass, 40 x 36 x 5 cm<br />
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Alice Ellis Bray (b. 1994)<br />
Alice Ellis-Bray is an artist from Lamorna<br />
in Cornwall. She works with self made<br />
costume, painting, performance and<br />
script to explore the infinite possibilities<br />
of identity and experience. Through<br />
learning the properties of nature and the<br />
nature of people, Bray seeks to portray<br />
an interconnectedness she feels with all<br />
things. Painting has assisted her as a tool<br />
to transmute stubborn emotions laying<br />
dormant within, painting the strength<br />
she seeks in the eyes of her paintings,<br />
helping her to find a way through life with<br />
painting as her remedy. With her oeuvre<br />
she has created something of a temple<br />
to mythical women, using arch-shaped<br />
boards tinged with gold in an allusion to<br />
religious iconography, which frame ‘selfie’,<br />
‘alter -ego’, subjects that are either direct<br />
references to well-known figures, looser<br />
notions of the primitive.<br />
Alice Ellis-Bray has exhibited her work<br />
widely, most recently at Tate St Ives.<br />
She has also taught at a number of art<br />
galleries and schools including Newlyn<br />
Art Gallery, Tate St Ives and CAST in<br />
Helston, Cornwall. She was selected as an<br />
‘Artist to Watch’ by Elephant Magazine in<br />
August 2022.<br />
.<br />
The Cords Have Been Cut<br />
oil and 23.5ct gold on board, 65 x 38 cm<br />
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Marie-Claire Hamon<br />
Rather than a topographical representation<br />
of landscape, Marie-Claire Hamon’s work<br />
taps into the strata of history, ecology,<br />
cultural lore, and experience that form our<br />
human connection to a place. However,<br />
humans are not defined identities at the<br />
centre of the landscapes she paints. When<br />
humans do appear in her paintings, they are<br />
undefined by race, culture, gender, or time;<br />
they exist as archetypal representations<br />
of the human spirit. Her paintings are<br />
built through a deliberately slow process<br />
of layering. There is a very literal stage of<br />
‘watching paint dry’; it is this stage that<br />
allows her to read the work and marvel at<br />
the strange synchronicities that have arisen<br />
in her paintings. Through this process of<br />
layering, she has introduced elements that<br />
suggest mandalas, vestiges of ancient forms<br />
of religion, and reminiscences of esoteric<br />
signage. She works with the unknown,<br />
the accidental, and an unfixed sense of<br />
identity. The element of discovery and<br />
surprise forms an essential part of her<br />
practice as it proliferates new possibilities<br />
and directions.<br />
Marie-Claire Hamon was born in<br />
Switzerland and currently lives and works<br />
in remote West Cornwall. The area is<br />
charged with history, myths and folklore,<br />
where the ancient walls partitioning the<br />
fields are some of the most ancient on the<br />
planet, Neolithic quoits and Menhirs dot<br />
the surrounding area. Her work has been<br />
exhibited throughout the UK, including<br />
the Royal College Hunting Prize, The<br />
Discerning Eye, The Wells Contemporary,<br />
Brighton University and The Centre for<br />
European Culture in London.<br />
The Mountain<br />
oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm<br />
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Hermitage<br />
oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm<br />
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Rebecca Harper (b. 1989)<br />
Much of Rebecca Harper’s work has revealed<br />
itself through a diasporic consciousness<br />
which can often involve a multiplicity of<br />
belonging and a sense of difference, often<br />
one of ‘otherness’ and displacement. The<br />
identity of the displaced positioning is a<br />
paradox between location and dislocation,<br />
out of place everywhere and not completely<br />
anywhere. Generally, the work frames<br />
expressions of ‘being’ and manifests itself<br />
within an unfolding, wondering, allegoric<br />
commentary on the locations that she<br />
inhabits and those which inhabit her.<br />
Recent work explores a cast of reoccurring<br />
characters that rotate around the outskirts<br />
of the house that she grew up in, where<br />
she also found herself locked down during<br />
Covid. This work is a part of a body of work<br />
that acknowledges the human and worldly<br />
capacity to live at the edge of the precipice.<br />
The characters are never seen as portraits<br />
as such, more like actors that play a role,<br />
filling in for particular people, as they fill<br />
a stage. As Rebecca says of the figure who<br />
resembles herself; “It feels like perhaps this<br />
woman, has almost become a guiding spirit<br />
of myself, one of vulnerability and strength<br />
in the dealings of uncertainty, instability<br />
loss, and grief. She shows up reliably again<br />
and again during terrible turbulence.”<br />
Harper was born in London in 1989,<br />
where she continues to live and work. She<br />
studied at UWE Bristol then The Royal<br />
Drawing School and Turps Art School<br />
(Postgraduate’s). Rebecca was Artist in<br />
Residence at The Santozium Museum,<br />
Santorini, in summer 2019, and Artist in<br />
Residence for the Ryder Project Space at<br />
A.P.T Studios, Deptford in 2018-19 before<br />
becoming a studio and committee Member<br />
in 2019. She was winner of the ACS Studio<br />
Prize in 2018. Chameleon, her debut solo<br />
show at Anima Mundi met with great<br />
acclaim including a review in the FT by<br />
Jackie Wullshlager. Most recently Rebecca<br />
was selected for The John Moore’s Painting<br />
Prize 2021, and previously selected for<br />
Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2018 at<br />
South London Gallery, Other curated shows<br />
include Huxley Parlour, Public Gallery, The<br />
Royal Academy Summer Show, Christies<br />
London and NYC, Flowers Gallery’, Paul<br />
Stolper Gallery, Turps Art Gallery and<br />
Arusha Gallery. Her work is on long term<br />
display in the Albright Collection at<br />
Maddox Street Club in London curated<br />
by Beth Greenacre and at the Santozeum<br />
Museum in Santorini. Harper is represented<br />
in many public and private collections<br />
internationally including the Ullens and<br />
the Royal Collections.<br />
Spellbind Reflecting<br />
acrylic on unprimed canvas, 102 x 80 cm<br />
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Lisa Wright (b. 1965)<br />
Lisa Wright’s work talks about the truth<br />
of things, and how it anchors us to the<br />
very essence of human experience. Nature,<br />
nurture, truth and wonderment are all<br />
aspects that she is capable of conjuring.<br />
For her, the act of drawing is a reminder<br />
of the power of line and form to distil<br />
the complexity of the world into a single<br />
image. Painting, is an act of suspension,<br />
capturing fleeting moments of her deepest<br />
thoughts, rendering them eternal. The<br />
aspiration for Wright is for the work to<br />
evoke emotions that verbal language cannot<br />
express. Wrights practice is rooted in the<br />
rigour of observational drawing. Using her<br />
sketchbook and camera she records the<br />
everyday creating visual narratives for later<br />
paintings. Wright has spent the majority<br />
of her career chronicling the growth and<br />
development of her relationship with her<br />
children, from pregnancy to adulthood.<br />
These drawings and paintings are not just<br />
a representation of Wright’s experiences,<br />
but rather their embodiment, bringing<br />
their intangible reality into the visible<br />
world for all to recognise and relate to.<br />
After studying at The Royal Academy<br />
Schools, London, 1990-1993, Wright<br />
moved to Cornwall, in the south west of<br />
England, where she currently lives and<br />
works. Her work has featured in numerous<br />
solo and curated group exhibitions both<br />
nationally and internationally and is held<br />
in many important corporate and private<br />
collections. Notable achievements include<br />
her appointment as the Royal Shakespeare<br />
Company artist in residence throughout<br />
the two year period of the RSC’s acclaimed<br />
‘Histories’ cycle of plays, culminating in<br />
an exhibition at the Roundhouse- which<br />
ran concurrently with the plays- and<br />
subsequently at the Royal Academy of<br />
Arts London; consistent selection for the<br />
Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition for<br />
over 20 years; inclusion in the significant<br />
‘Art Now Cornwall’, exhibition at Tate St<br />
Ives 2008 and winning The National Open<br />
Art Prize, the Hunting Art Prize, the 2013<br />
Threadneedle Prize and most recently<br />
Future Forest- a collaborative project with<br />
Tom Piper to celebrate the centeniary of<br />
The Forestry Commission.<br />
Balance of Control<br />
oil on canvas, 45 x 35 cm<br />
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Balance of Surrender<br />
oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm<br />
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Andrew Litten (b. 1970)<br />
Andrew Litten’s life size bronze sculpture<br />
‘Listening’ recently formed the focal point<br />
of The Samaritans’ medal winning ‘Listening<br />
Garden’, at this years RHS Chelsea Flower<br />
Show, in celebration of the Samaritans’ 70th<br />
Birthday. The highly emotive piece, sat in a<br />
quiet corner of the garden, waiting to hear<br />
the thoughts of those who passed through.<br />
Andrew’s expressionist style strives to<br />
reflect the conflict and vulnerability of<br />
human existence. His work draws on the<br />
obscure, with his figures often appearing<br />
in some form of isolation. However, with<br />
‘Listening’, Andrew also wanted the figure<br />
to encourage deep rooted human connection<br />
- empathetically encouraging people to sit,<br />
talk, listen, and be heard.<br />
Andrew Litten is a British artist, born in<br />
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire in 1970. He<br />
currently works from his studio in Fowey,<br />
Cornwall. He is a self-taught artist leaving<br />
art college as a teenager having found it<br />
to be too restrictive to his aspired method<br />
of working. For a decade he created mostly<br />
small-scale works using humble domestic or<br />
found materials (including envelopes and<br />
assembled furniture parts). The work made<br />
at this time deliberately challenged ideas<br />
of art elitism and art as commodity. He<br />
then moved to Cornwall in 2001 and chose<br />
to begin exhibiting. Early success came<br />
when his work was included in an exhibition<br />
titled ‘Nudes’ in New York City, (along with<br />
Jacob Epstein and Pierre-Auguste Renoir),<br />
where his work was highlighted and reviewed<br />
by the New York Times. Shortly after he had<br />
four consecutive solo exhibitions at Goldifsh<br />
Fine Arts in Penzance, Cornwall. Other<br />
notable exhibitions included ‘Move’ at Vyner<br />
Street, London, during Frieze Art Week<br />
2007, where his work ‘Dog Breeder’, created<br />
as a twisted and emphatic anti-art statement,<br />
was exhibited. He was also included in ‘No<br />
Soul For Sale’ at Tate Modern Turbine Hall,<br />
London in 2010. In 2012 he held a major<br />
solo exhibition at Millennium in St Ives,<br />
Cornwall and that year was given a guest<br />
solo exhibition at L13 Light Industrial<br />
Workshop, London. He has also held largescale<br />
solo exhibitions at Spike Island and<br />
Motorcade FlashParade in Bristol. ‘Ordinary<br />
Bodies, Ordinary Bones’ was conceived with<br />
support from The Arts Council, UK and<br />
was exhibited at Anima Mundi in 2018.<br />
Works have been included in numerous<br />
international curated mixed exhibitions<br />
in Berlin, Dublin, Siena, Milwaukee and<br />
New York City and in Venice during the<br />
54th Biennale. Most recently paintings have<br />
been exhibited in four major museums in<br />
China. Andrew Litten paintings feature<br />
in numerous international private and<br />
public collections.<br />
Contained (Study for Returned)<br />
oil on board and frame), 42 x 35 cm<br />
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Sequence of Destinations (Study for Returned)<br />
oil on board and frame), 46 x 30 cm<br />
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Spencer Shakespear (b. 1967)<br />
Born in in London, Spencer Shakespeare<br />
discovered his addiction to the natural<br />
world in his yearly holidays to Cornwall with<br />
his family, which, after 20 years of living on<br />
Australia’s Gold Coast he has returned to,<br />
residing near Penzance where he says the<br />
bird song is at its most beautiful. Being<br />
an obsessive and automatic drawer since<br />
the age of seven, Shakespeare completed<br />
a degree in Illustration at Bournemouth<br />
College of Art and Design. He enjoys<br />
transcribing places of intersection; the<br />
coastline, the edge of forests - places where<br />
a transition of boundaries takes place.<br />
The garden is significant in his work<br />
because of the element of interchange<br />
between the domestic boundary and the<br />
beginning of wilderness. Although he is<br />
inspired by such places, he never strives<br />
to capture the specifics of the landscape<br />
around him, instead drawing and exposing<br />
his own imaginary world upon it. His work<br />
connotes a kind of mystery and magic - a<br />
world where high contrast colours inject<br />
life force: vibrating with an emotional<br />
energy. His semi-abstract canvases show<br />
the blurred boundaries of the humming<br />
world he witnesses.<br />
Red Kite Revival<br />
oil, acrylic, charcoal, graphic on canvas, 170 x 195 cm<br />
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Sam Bassett (b. 1982)<br />
Sam Bassett artworks display a boundless<br />
zeal, sharp humour and honest pathos made<br />
with a creative, experimental, freedom. His<br />
language of mark-making varies from raw<br />
sweeping gestures to draughtsman-like<br />
drawn or sgraffitto schematics. His dexterity<br />
enables him to effortlessly capture scattered<br />
images of his inner monologue - often<br />
erratic, often pinpoint. The ups and downs,<br />
the highs and lows. His paintings could<br />
be described as a form of ‘psychological<br />
cubism’, where the inner and the outer<br />
self reveal themselves and coalesce. His<br />
autobiographical work maps a fast paced<br />
and over-active mind searching for the<br />
personal and universal meaning and in turn<br />
reflect both positive and negative concerns<br />
about 21st century society and the wider<br />
human condition. Bassett’s most recent<br />
works imbue a deep rooted connection<br />
to place, the sea and landscape, as well<br />
as community and heritage. The localised<br />
placement of these cautionary tales become<br />
allegorical for broader more universal hopes<br />
and wider loss, fear and disconnection.<br />
Bassett is a British artist born Cornwall<br />
where he still lives and works. St Ives<br />
has been his family’s home since 1695.<br />
The artistic traditions of the town had an<br />
undoubted influence over his development,<br />
but his Grandfather, a fisherman by trade was<br />
also a keen amateur painter, as was his other<br />
Grandfather in Newlyn. The young Bassett<br />
was supported early on with encouragement<br />
and painting materials. Bassett ’s studio<br />
space is part of a complex that coincidently<br />
sits above his Grandfather’s former net<br />
loft. He studied in Bournemouth, England<br />
and then lived in London but the pull of<br />
the sea brought him home. In addition to<br />
his own practice Bassett founded LETH<br />
projects, a curatorial platform for emergent<br />
artists. Bassett has exhibited internationally<br />
including solo exhibitions with Vigo in<br />
London, Kornfeld Gallery in Berlin and<br />
Anima Mundi, solo presentations have also<br />
featured at START at the Saatchi Gallery in<br />
London and CODE Art Fair, Copenhagen.<br />
Works are held in an increasing number<br />
of collections worldwide including the<br />
acquisition of the work ‘Lost Karensa’<br />
by Tremenheere Sculpture Park which is<br />
permanently exhibited alongside James<br />
Turrell, Kishio Suga, Richard Long and David<br />
Nash among others. Bassett has been featured<br />
in numerous articles included Christies<br />
magazine and The New York post which is<br />
indicative of a notable and rapid increase<br />
in the artists popularity and ambition.<br />
Together With Bird<br />
mixed media on canvas, 76 x 102 cm<br />
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Claire Curneen (b. 1968)<br />
Claire Curneen’s iconic sculptures are<br />
poignant contemplations on the liminal and<br />
precarious nature of the human condition;<br />
exploring themes around death, rebirth and<br />
the sublime. Universal and profound states<br />
of fear, loss, suffering and sacrifice fuse<br />
with devotion, desire, wonder and mystery<br />
to underlie each intricate, porcelain figure.<br />
Their translucent and fragile qualities offer<br />
potent, metaphoric abstract narratives.<br />
Porcelain, terracotta and black stoneware<br />
create a grounded vulnerability to these<br />
works, with dribbles of glaze and flashes of<br />
gold to embellish denoted sacred qualities.<br />
Claire Curneen was born in Tralee, Co.<br />
Kerry, Ireland in 1968 and currently lives<br />
and works in Wales, UK. Works have been<br />
exhibited internationally and appear in<br />
many notable public collections including<br />
The Crafts Council, London; Shipley<br />
ArGallery, Gateshead; National Museum<br />
& Gallery of Wales, Cardiff; Victoria and<br />
Albert Museum, London; The Fitzwilliam<br />
Museum, Cambridge; Manchester City Art<br />
Gallery, Manchester; National Museum of<br />
Scotland, Edinburgh; Aberystwyth Arts<br />
Centre, Aberystwyth, Wales; Cleveland Craft<br />
Centre, Middlesbrough; Oldham Art Gallery<br />
and Museum, Manchester; York City Art<br />
Gallery, York; Middlesbrough Institute of<br />
Modern Art, Middlesbrough; Crawford Art<br />
Gallery, Cork, Eire; Limerick City Gallery<br />
of Art, Limerick, Eire; Ulster Museum,<br />
Belfast, Northern Ireland; Benaki Museum,<br />
Athens, Greece; Clay Studio, Philadelphia,<br />
USA; Mint Museum of Craft + Design,<br />
Charlotte, North Carolina, USA; Icheon<br />
World Ceramic Centre, Gyeonggi-do, Korea;<br />
Taipei Ceramics Museum, Taiwan.<br />
Angel<br />
tin glazed terracotta, 63 x 30 x 23 cm<br />
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Joy Wolfenden Brown (b. 1961)<br />
Joy Wolfenden Brown’s intimate oil<br />
paintings feel hauntingly familiar<br />
possessing a raw, emotional, honesty. She<br />
captures fleeting fragments of memory,<br />
moments in time where the inherent<br />
vulnerability of the figures depicted, often<br />
in isolation, is palpable. These are lovingly<br />
yet spontaneously executed reflections<br />
on the human condition, which have an<br />
unnervingly, yet simultaneously comforting,<br />
unguarded quality.<br />
Joy Wolfenden Brown is a British artist born<br />
in Stamford, Lincolnshire. She currently<br />
lives in Bude, North Cornwall. She graduated<br />
from Leeds University then completed a<br />
post-graduate diploma in Art Therapy at<br />
Hertfordshire College of Art & Design<br />
which she worked as an for ten years before<br />
moving to Cornwall in 1999. Since then<br />
she has had numerous solo exhibitions and<br />
was the First Prize Winner in The National<br />
Open Art Competition, 2012. She was also<br />
awarded the Somerville Gallery painting<br />
prize in 2003 and first prize winner at the<br />
Sherborne Open in 2007 and the Revolver<br />
Pricze at The RWA in 2019. Works were<br />
acquired by the Anthony Pettullo Outsider<br />
Art Collection in Milwaukee with further<br />
works held in collections worldwide.<br />
Over the Storm<br />
oil on paper, 24 x 37 cm<br />
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Phoebe Cummings (b. 1981)<br />
Phoebe Cummings’ works predominantly<br />
using unfired clay to make poetic and<br />
performative sculptures and installations<br />
that emphasise materiality, fragility, time,<br />
creation, loss and decay. Her impressive<br />
interventions are often constructed directly<br />
on site, allowing an instinctive development<br />
of tensions between object and location.<br />
Cummings questions what we will carry<br />
forward into the future by producing<br />
intricate, hand made and exquisitely<br />
delicate sculptures based on ancient plants<br />
and primitive ritual, imbued with a sense<br />
of magic and mysticism. Drawing together<br />
elements of English Paganism as well as<br />
the aesthetic excess of Baroque and Rococo<br />
design, the resultant objects could be<br />
considered as dystopian ornaments of a<br />
future anthropology or fragile relics of an<br />
almost forgotten past.<br />
Cummings is a British artist born in<br />
Walsall, England and currently resides in<br />
Stafford. She studied ceramics at Brighton<br />
University in 2002 before completing an<br />
MA in ceramics and glass at the Royal<br />
College of Art in 2005. She has undertaken<br />
a number of international artist residencies<br />
including a six month residency at the<br />
Victoria & Albert Museum in 2010. In 2017<br />
she won first place at the inaugural Woman’s<br />
Hour Craft Prize with work exhibited at the<br />
V&A Museum, before touring to venues<br />
around the UK. Cummings was selected<br />
as the winner of the British Ceramics<br />
Biennial Award in 2011 and awarded a<br />
ceramics fellowship at London’s Camden<br />
Arts Centre (2012–13). ‘Supernatural’ was<br />
her first solo exhibition at Anima-Mundi.<br />
In addition, Cummings’ work has been<br />
featured in numerous group exhibitions,<br />
including ‘60|40 Starting Point Series’ at<br />
Siobhan Davies Studios, London, ‘Formed<br />
Thoughts’ at Jerwood Space, London;<br />
and ‘Swept Away: Dust, Ashes, and Dirt<br />
in Contemporary Art and Design’ at the<br />
Museum of Arts and Design, New York. In<br />
2013, she had a solo show at the University<br />
of Hawaii Art Gallery in Honolulu and The<br />
Newlyn Art Gallery.<br />
Study<br />
unfired clay, 20 x 15 x 20 cm<br />
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Luke Hannam (b. 1966)<br />
Luke Hannam describes his work as the<br />
result of an ‘ordered chaos’ where poetic<br />
paintings are made ‘in the eye of the storm’,<br />
where creativity spins wildly, through bursts<br />
of impulse around a silent meditative deep<br />
well of meaning. Ideas emerge out of an<br />
energetic dedication to drawing and a<br />
relentless desire to explore images and<br />
motifs. His work is instantly recognisable<br />
through his strong punch of colour and<br />
definite use of line which weaves its way<br />
sensuously across the surface, denoting both<br />
the delicacy and strength of the form and<br />
spirit of the subject. Hannam’s paintings<br />
expressively offer a singular view on how<br />
what he sees, how he thinks and pivotally<br />
how he feels about the human condition and<br />
what lies beyond our materiality. His work<br />
could be seen to continue the Romantic<br />
tradition, embracing reality and mysticism<br />
with the wonder of experience.<br />
Luke Hannam was born in 1966 and currently<br />
lives in East Sussex, UK. He studied Fine<br />
Art in the 1980s and whilst others of his<br />
generation faithfully chanted the conceptual<br />
mantra of the time, Hannam focussed on<br />
perfecting his expressive drawing skills<br />
seeking inspiration from the earlier masters.<br />
Works have been exhibited and collected<br />
internationally, including the collections<br />
of Stefan Simchowitz and David Kowitz.<br />
The Apple Peelers<br />
oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm<br />
92
93
94
Andy Harper (b. 1971)<br />
Andy Harper’s intricate oil paintings deal<br />
with the fruits of labour in the shadow of<br />
uncertainty. On one side they are concerned<br />
with the immediate process of painting, the<br />
mechanical, almost automated act of laying<br />
down mark after mark on a wet surface. On<br />
the other hand, they are subject to longterm<br />
strategy, each mark developed over<br />
time and embedded into a composition that<br />
provides an architectural structure for the<br />
work. While this framework may be logically<br />
ordered, the marks themselves are organic<br />
entities, forming a broad visual library that<br />
has taken on a life its own, growing through<br />
repetition and recombination in each new<br />
work. The paintings act like a Petri-dish for<br />
the culturing of this visual language, and a<br />
greenhouse for its cultivation. The forms may<br />
seem organic, but upon closer inspection<br />
they are not specific to anything the natural<br />
world has to offer. Rather they appear<br />
as a synthetic form of nature, generated<br />
from compulsive repetition and subjective<br />
reinterpretation, a world that has somehow<br />
evolved beyond the point of progeny to<br />
become its own independent alien entity.<br />
Andy Harper lives in St Just, the most<br />
westerly town in Cornwall and works from a<br />
studio at the renowned Porthmeor Studios<br />
in St Ives. He studied his BA in Fine<br />
Art: Painting & Printmaking at Brighton<br />
Polytechnic and then MA Fine Art: Painting<br />
at the Royal College of Art, London. In<br />
1996, with some peers from the RCA, Harper<br />
co-founded NotCut which ran a studio and<br />
photographic darkroom in London and<br />
curated ‘Lightness & Weight’ in Birmingham.<br />
During this time he also studied part time<br />
at Middlesex University for an MA in Visual<br />
Culture and had his first solo exhibition<br />
in London in 1998. After attending the<br />
Braziers International Artist Workshop in<br />
2000, Harper became a member of the<br />
organising committee until 2008. Harper<br />
has taught in many institutions nationally<br />
and internationally, and had teaching posts<br />
at Central St. Martins, The City Lit and<br />
is currently a Senior Lecturer on the<br />
MFA Fine Art programme at Goldsmiths,<br />
University of London. Harper has exhibited<br />
widely in Europe, North America and<br />
South Korea.<br />
Seriquel<br />
oil on board, 60 cm diameter<br />
95
Published by Anima Mundi to coincide with ’<strong>Lughnasadh</strong>’<br />
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