www.patriothallgallery.co.uk
INTERSPACES
SunBear Gallery, Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh
Open: 18th June until 5th July
Preview: 17th June 7-9pm; Annuale event: 26th June 2-5pm
SunBear Gallery presents INTERSPACES, a group show of painting, drawing and video by artists whose work re-imagines familiar genres such as landscape, still life and the figure. Each of the exhibiting artists reinvigorates these genres, incorporating their individual fantasies, symbolism and imagination. Process plays an important role in expressing a multi-layered perception, where painted/drawn marks shift between being illusive, representational and abstract. The combination of recognised and imagined, real and unreal, draws ones attention to the existence of a liminal border, or interspace, between external and internal.
Featured artists:
Ville Kylätasku's paintings depict human forms acting out physiological impulses and their highly charged, painterly execution expresses an angst ridden feeling of self dislocation.
Michael Lawton uses paintings as a way of revisiting and rethinking ideas, thoughts and memories. The 'artwork' starts here, with this thinking process. This will often lead onto to the construction of models and still life that he then paints from. His paintings resist an instant understanding but remain accurate enough to make understanding seem possible, tangibly reinterpreting their initial stimuli.
Juliette Losq's paintings and drawings reference the notion of 'The Clearing' - where wilderness and chaos oppose civilization and order. The work uses shifts in scale to evoke an uncertain world in which the uncanny can coexist with the mundane, and where the possibility of confronting what has been repressed may generate at once feelings of creeping malevolence or whimsical curiosity.
Phoebe Mitchell's paintings are informed by found images of formal gardens and mythological imagery torn from magazines, manuals and family albums. The compulsion to visualize this internal image making is combined with a concern for process, allowing the painting to take its own course.
Rory Middleton's experimental film, Lessonlands, featuring a dog, a house and the landscape, was
filmed on the East Coast of Scotland. It is a journey concerned with mood and atmosphere more than narrative and uses a cinematic language and a painterly quality to tell its tale, while having enough ambiguity to allow the viewer to form their own story.
Mimei Thompson's painting shows an awareness of the impossibility of pure nature, exposing a longing for it and a desire, knowingly unattainable, for a direct connection to origin and authenticity. Caves are the subject for the investigation of an internal world, where images function metaphorically and symbolically.
Further information:
SunBear Gallery is an artist run space temporarily situated at Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh. Started in 2008, it has exhibited artists from Edinburgh and further afield. As well as its founders Thomas Aitchison, Tim Dodds and Tim Le Breuilly other artists include: Spartacus Chetwynd, Luke Collins, Adham Faramawy, Levi Hanes, Ursula Llewelyn, Conor Kelly, Rob Kennedy, Brian Moran, Steven Murray, Dr Neupop, Katie Orton, Norman Shaw, Liesel Thomas, Emmett Walsh. It has also launched a publication co-curated by experimental cartoonist, Malcy Duff. http://www.sunbear.org.
Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201