Naughty But Nice
Exhibition By Priscilla Jones
7th January 2010 until 3rd March 2010
Published Date:
09/02/2010
Modified Date:
09/02/2010
CITIES
Exhibition By Clare Caulfield
Mixed Media Paintings
Published Date:
09/02/2010
Modified Date:
09/02/2010
Figuratively Speaking’
November 7th - December 24th 2009,
‘Figuratively Speaking’ is an exhibition that explores the figure through stitch pushing the boundaries and processes in contemporary embroidery. Exhibiting artists include Cathy Cullis, Michelle Holmes, Priscilla Jones and Alice Kettle.
Cathy Cullis explores personal themes including dreams and memories translating them into tiny pictorial images, these are executed in machine embroidery and demonstrate her unique skill in identifying and exploiting meticulous detail. The embroideries are worked in dense stitch creating an intuitive response to the use of machine embroidery. One of her embroideries titled ‘Owl Dress’ depicts a figure wearing a garment adorned with a group of figures and an owl, the juxtaposition of the two features can only be described as a haunting image that evokes a truly emotional response.
Michelle Holmes also draws with stitch but in an entirely different way to Cullis. Focusing on the linier qualities the stitched line can create. Holmes works on a variety of carefully prepared background fabrics. The grounds themselves are considered in the extreme and are just as important as the quality of line she uses to produce her fragile figures. Holmes endeavours to create a sense of faded beauty in her subtle use of colour and tone. A re-occurring theme in her work is an obsession with journeys and for this exhibition she has been inspired by Lady Isabella Bird, whose novel titled ‘A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains’ has been the focus for this new body of work. Holmes main piece in this exhibition captures the visual story of a life lived in this magnificent terrain with all its rugged beauty yet depicted in Holmes’s fine stitched lines. Fragments of fabric are used in soft colours to break the rigor of the stitch and add balance to a complex composition. The piece reads almost like a collection of nostalgic snap shots, stills from distant memories a story, which cannot fail to draw you in to Lady Isabella’s world.
Priscilla Jones’s response to the figure differs to the other exhibitors focusing on a three dimensional approach. A piece in her collection titled ‘Fly Away Home’ is a wire birdcage housing a surreal stitched figure half bird half woman, another piece is created from a mans starched collar depicting a disfigured fairy having lost her limbs long ago. Jones explores identity, memory and the translucency of time, reworking a range of recycled materials including broken ceramic dolls with stitch, silk, wax and wire. The quirky assembled figures are freely suspended almost dancing effortlessly through the air enabling us to watch them move and spin. Jones explores the subconscious depicting haunting and unnerving figures revealing an edge of surrealism that implies the common thread of personal memory.
Alice Kettle has extensively exhibited her embroideries all over the world and has long standing reputation in the field as an artist who paints with stitch. Kettle’s stitched figures are a culmination of many hours spent drawing in a variety of mixed media processes. Included in this exhibition are two of Kettles mixed media studies demonstrating how she creates images for her stitched pieces giving a rare insight into the developmental processes of her visual language.
‘Figurative Speaking’ is an exhibition that seams together the unparalleled work of four well known artists and articulates their individual desire to explore the figure relating to the viewer a truly personal response. Each has developed a narrative that unites them in terms of theme but diversifies them in terms of method, stitch with its long history of storey telling enables us to respond to these implied associations without the prejudice other creative mediums can evoke.
By Jennifer Pritchard Couchman
Jennifer has a background in fashion and for the last 12 years has successfully designed exclusive bridal wear through her design studio and bridal boutique in Lancaster. She also lectures at Preston College and University Centre at Blackburn College.
The focus for the show is contemporary figurative images created using machine embroidery. Artists taking part are Cathy Cullis, Alice Kettle, Michelle Holmes, Rachael Howard and Priscilla Jones. Images includes in the attachment are by Michelle Holmes.
Published Date:
03/07/2009
Modified Date:
09/02/2010
Sirens - An Exhibition by Kate Webster
'Now the sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence.'
Franz Kafka 1917.
Kate Has always worked in oil paints, producing a whole array of differing images, based upon various subject matter. In her latest exhibition, however, she has chosen to pay homage to some of the glamorous female icons of 'The Dream Machine', the golden age of Hollywood.
Kate's paintings, executed in black and white, portray the crisply evocative images of the thirties, forties and fifties. Each image stares out from its own imprisoning canvas, isolated in a static timeless nostalgia. Her subjects are pictured as a series of 'stills'.
Faithful to an era in which cinematic special effects were still unknown, and which the main source of light was placed high up in front of the subject, her idealised portraits display faces in which the shadows of the skin texture are smoothed away, and facial contours are exaggerated. This gives them the dual quality of being Sirens, both goddess like and ghostly.
Published Date:
02/07/2009
Modified Date:
22/09/2009
collection of ‘Seaside Films’ By local film maker
Exhibition up and running! Had a great response so far! Prints are selling well, we also have a collection of ‘Seaside Films’ By local film maker Jenny McCabe, Vicki van Mechelen and Helen Bendon pop along and view the show case currently screening in the gallery window. The screen is set in a vintage suitcase (very appropriate) bring along, ice cream, and enjoy the fun!!!
Morecambe Dances is a short community dance film devised, directed and led by Jenny McCabe, Vicki van Mechelen and Helen Bendon . Shot in the summer of 2007, the film features different styles of dance performed along the prom by local dance groups and passers-by.
First screened directly on the promenade on a giant screen provided by the Nuffield theatre September 2007. Music for the film was performed by Gila Robinson a local piano teacher, and Pete Moser of More Music Morecambe.The project was supported by Awards for all, Lancaster city council and the Nuffield Theatre.
Jenny McCabe is an artist working mainly in video and digital imaging, with a background in Fine Art. She creates work as an individual artist, as a facilitator helping others to create their own work and as a collaborator sharing practice and learning from others’ experience and skills.
She has produced work in a variety of different settings, creating both documentary and abstract video works, screen based works integral to performance pieces, photographic projects and video projects based in hospital settings working with patients to create autobiographical works.
Vicki van Mechelen is a dancer/Choreographer with the majority of her work being carnival art in the community, generating and performing material on the street with groups in Morecambe and Barrow in Furness, encouraging self expression, creativity and most importantly fun.
Helen Bendon is a UK based artist working predominantly in video and photography. Helen’s work was selected for New Contemporaries in 1998 and since then she has been exhibiting internationally (inc. Yvon Lambert, Paris, Kari Kenetti, Helsinki and the Centre for Photographie in Geneva). Her films and video works have also been shown at international festivals and screening events including the Commonwealth Film Festival, the Lux and the international Film Festival 700IS, Iceland, in which her film The Pack was shortlisted for the ´Alcoa´ prize.
Published Date:
02/07/2009
Modified Date:
02/07/2009
Beach By Kirsten Jones
Kirsten is inspired by collections of objects and natural form. Her paintings are bright and evocative with layers of detail and subtle references contained within. She depicts quirky arrangements of garments and treasured possessions such as shoes, crockery and foods, as well as observed still life and her beautiful imaginary gardens. Using layered fragments of maps, dictionary references and stamps from around the world Kirsten creates a narrative of secret histories, which evoke a memory or a sense of place.
The Washing Line
This series of paintings originated with a walk through the streets of Down along in St Ives, Cornwall. Outside one of the fisherman’s cottages was a washing line hung with every type of garment. All shapes and sizes (shoes and all!). It was as if a very big wave had unexpectedly soaked a whole family. The image seemed to capture the essence of holidays by the beach. This idea continued following a trip to New York in 2008, and Kirsten began painting a series of pieces exploring ideas around fashion.
Published Date:
02/07/2009
Modified Date:
02/07/2009
Exhibition by Rachel Eardley
AT HOME
by Rachel Eardley
6th March 2009 until 30th April 2009
Rachel
produces hand drawn and printed images on the theme of the home.
Finding subject matter in kitchen cupboards and cutlery drawers, her work thrives on the details of everyday things.She creates playful images which evoke feelings of nostalgia and often link to traditions from these fair isles.Known for her fine line pen and ink drawings, Rachel has recently developed a new body of screen prints incorporating blocks of bold colour to heighten the detailed line.
Published Date:
03/02/2009
Modified Date:
03/02/2009