Thursday 4th – Sunday 14th July 2019
Private View: Thursday 4 July, 6-9pm
5-7 July, 11-14 July 12 – 6pm
Exhibition in Lumen Gallery, The Belfry, St John’s North Gallery
Darkness comes in many forms; we see the space between the stars as darkness at night, we feel darkness when there is fear, we acknowledge darkness when knowledge is scarce, we illuminate darkness to tell our stories, we use its colour to intensify emotions and yet we know it is the absence of light.
‘Out of Darkness’ is a group exhibition of recent work by former MA Drawing students at Wimbledon College of Arts, UAL. Using and responding to the nature of the spaces of the Crypt gallery and St. John on Bethnal Green, the exhibition offers multiple immersions into contrasting interpretations and realisations of darkness.
Artists:
Emma Louise Hollaway – turning the artistic strategy of drawing negative space into a research method, Emma Louise looks at hidden art historical narratives. Mining archives and institutions for subject matter, Emma Louise attempts to find a lineage of draughtswomen from which she can learn and find her own art historical context. Slides and microfilms are used to shine light on the historic attitude to artist women and their relationship to drawing.
Sepideh Khalili – using her drawing and printmaking practice, Sepideh explores her sense of identity and cultural memory after years of displacement. Her fragmented perceptions of place are combined with rigorous technical skill in computer coding and etching to create ordered chaos of splintered geometry and repeating patterns in intricate prints on black paper.
Jo Lane – working on black paper each drawing takes its viewpoint from somewhere in luminal space, working with white paper the viewpoint seems to be from the dark place inside . Referencing the compositions of Old Master portraits such as Frans Hals, the black surround sets each work in epic, unending vacuum. Jo’s subjects are drawn in reflective graphite that comes to life under directional, focused light.
Ellis Scheer – the cinematic space is inferior to the light that travels through it; it’s designed to be forgotten by the transfixed spectator of the narrative that unfolds onto the magical silver screen. The illumination of the screen simultaneously constitutes the source of the image, and serves as an illusionary window into another world.
Ellis Scheer uses the mediums of dry pastels and installation to explore space within the filmic image, and the spaces in which film presents itself. She appropriates stilled movie images, referring back to their cinematic origin by substituting the filmscreen with the screen that the drawing upholds.
Charmaine Watkiss is a multi disciplinary artist who explores ways of describing and mapping the universe. Research that includes alchemy, medieval symbology and African cosmological traditions has woven multi layered narratives into two new drawings and a video piece. Charmaine is interested in re framing the African ’story’ and placing it within the context of world cultures who have always looked to the stars as an aid to navigation, divination and deification.
charmainewatkiss.com
Image Caption:
Jo Lane
emergency on earth…
4 panel black Revere 300gsm paper – 152 x 220 x 100 cm
Beacon light, graphite, aluminium powder, phthalo blue pigment and ground conte.
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