Twisted / Cognitive / Sublime
curated by Mary Paterson as part of Art3

3 shows, 3 locations, 1 theme, 24 artists

Opening in three venues from September to November, Twisted / Cognitive / Sublime offers a new perspective on landscape. The show includes painting, photography, print-making, drawing & mixed media work by 24 artists, and all works are for sale.

Each venue will explore a different aspect of landscape - encompassing physicality, memory, mapping, the imaginary and the absurd. Watch the exhibition grow as you visit each site.

The first show opens at the Wine Gallery, 49 Hollywood Road, SW10 9HX
Private view 4th September 2006, 6 – 8 pm.
Show continues until 8th October 2006.
Tube: Gloucester Road or Earls Court

Twisted / Cognitive / Sublime at the Wine Gallery concentrates on the physicality of memory – the placement and displacement of landscape in the mind. The artists explore memory and suggestion as they are provoked or obscured by material and process.

In El Bedlow’s work, flags, land and road networks crumble, commune and even fly away. The emblems used to confine identity have taken on a life of their own, and the concepts they define are transformed beyond recognition. The artist is herself a cultural hybrid - half English and half Irish, she spent most of her childhood in Japan. Her paintings belie national boundaries and reveal the fragility of the symbols that define our world.

Stephen Buckeridge pours, smears and moulds matter across his canvasses - their surfaces both retain and reveal the physical memory of their past. Layers crack and peel to show the tortured surface of the layers below, but they also obscure this history. While the action of the previous layer prompts the form of each new application, the material must also wipe out this memory in the process.

Layering in Kate Genever’s work also draws on process and distortion. Using an old stuffed dog as a starting point, she drew and redrew the image until it created its own environment. The pictures are overlaid with lithography and screen printing, adding abstract elements of landscape, cityscape and colour to the evolving memory.

Pushing, pulling and playing with paint, Katherine Russell’s pictures emerge as intuitive, process-based works. Depicting a snapshot, instead of a planned view, these paintings provoke the emotion of a half-remembered gaze, or the glimpse of something magical from the corner of your eye.

Joanne Scholar and David Wightman collaborate here to explore the symbolism of referents both abstract and personal. The stark geometry of the target is coupled with the tactile surface of embossed wallpaper, created by the artists from designs based around ‘nature’ and ‘landscape’. The rich symbolism of these elements mixes memory and matter, bridging the gap between landscape and abstraction.

Exhibition continues:

Escape Bar and Art: 12th Sept– 3rd Oct 2006
214 – 216 Railton Road, SE24 0JT
020 7737 0333
Private view 12th September from 8 pm
Opposite Herne Hill train station
www.escapebarandart.com

Sun and Doves: 23rd Oct – 11th Nov 2006
61 – 63 Coldharbour Lane, SE5 9NS
020 7733 1525
Private view 23rd October 7 – 9pm
Buses: 35, 45, 345
www.sunanddoves.com / www.flickr.com/photos/thesunanddoves