private view pics | future exhibitions | contact Art 3 | wine gallery | home

' Local '

new paintings by
Jim Dunkley &
Sarah Sparkes

8 May - 18 June

Private view: Monday 8 May 2006 : 6-8 PM

The Wine Gallery-49 Hollywood Rd, London SW10
contact Art 3 for more info on 020 7585 0645

Click here for more information on this show

Art 3 are pleased to present 'Local' An exhibition of paintings by Jim Dunkley and Sarah Sparkes

The idea of the local pub where a community is created through the telling of stories and acting out of domestic dramas has become a convention of British life.  In 'Local'‚ these two artists present work which reveals the artists‚ individual interests in the world of pub culture‚

'Dot and Jim' - Jim Dunkley

A series of paintings based on the Eastenders TV soap sees Jim Dunkley return to painting after ten years working in performance and multi-media. The tumultuous drama of life around the 'Vic' in Albert Square seemed an ironic counterpoint to the reality of life living in Hackney near the original site of the TV drama.

'Patrick at the Vic' - Jim Dunkley

While painting the series he was completing a commission at the Dalston estate where he lives, drawing 65 portraits of tenants to commemorate the founding of the estate. The drawings are permanently installed in the tenants' hall, the portraits fixing in time a particular group of residents from the Summer of 2005 just as the paintings of Eastenders characters are moments from the series over the same period. Out of their narrative context the images become more ambiguous, The storyline forgotten while the emotions depicted by the actors are permanently frozen. In 'Den loses it' the late lamented villain will look out at us angrily for as long as the painting exists. In 'Little Mo' our heroine  will always look vulnerable standing against the window, clinging to her baby.

'Zoe on the phone' - Jim Dunkley

In reviewing a one man show of Dunkley's paintings at the Albermarle Gallery in the Arts Review in 1990 Mary Rose Beaumont wrote "The paintings are teasing conundrums, which make one ask, as in a Hopper painting, 'What's going on?" Even during his period working in performance, which took him to France, Portugal, Russia and Spain he narrated mysterious stories that leave their echo on his website jimd.clara.co.uk. where Dunkley has created a graphic novel 'Banjaw, alive and dead' which describes the fictional life of an artist in illustrated stories which hide as much as they reveal.

In his latest project Dunkley is making a series of near life size drawings from photographs shot covertly of shoppers in Mare street, Hackney.(see website). These are local people with their own distinctive individuality yet we know nothing of their lives