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Double Happiness - Group Exhibition
- Curated by Piers Secunda
Isha Bøhling Double Happiness is an exhibition of four painters, whose work expands the archive of painting, by contending with the shift from high modernism to pop in a contemporary context, and dealing with the objectivity of painting to varying degrees. Isha Bøhling's office filing cabinet stands in the middle of the room. The drawers are operated by the viewers, who discover inside, an Alice in Wonderland experience of miniature to miniscule abstract paintings on plywood. The smallest of these wax coated works, no larger than a piece of contemporary jewelry. These paintings yield a toy like version of classic Rothko esque and mosaic patterned designs. The scale of the works imply a pocket handy, fully portable version of high art, but display a pop art simplicity, without the baggage of commercial figurative imagery. Jo Bruton's glass bead coated paintings, overflow with the frenzied exuberance of the Las Vegas night. The desert city provides Jo with a plethora of sources for these intertwinings of image and movement. All the elements of these works conspire to weave themselves into a web of flatness across the canvas. The graphic, referential imagery, provides memory props for paintings derived of moments experienced at the edge of the cultural void. The sparkling glass encrusted surfaces, accelerate the paintings to a theatrical degree, pushing the works into a faux culture realm, where the unbelievable feels normal. The plundering of the furnishings of a near vacuous existence, captivate the retina like the sparkle of a real diamond. Danny Rolph's paintings are made on sheets Makrolon plastic, with a dictionary of personalized marks, dots, dashes, lines and cell like blobs, to name a few. His several sided paintings are made as separate individual sheets, and glued together according to a visual result. The pushes the double play of surface matter and subject matter into a place where neither can be fully deciphered. The Makrolon plastic melts the language of the work into a blur akin to a message disappearing into murky water. The luscious marks bear a visual resemblance to logos and graphic design, and just occasionally, a sign or symbol finds its way onto the picture plane. Piers Secunda's paint constructions spill into the exhibition space, gushing from their support in an explosion of paint. A release from the flat surface and the embrace of paint in a physical form, provide the letters of a painting vocabulary. The scrawl of spray paint, gestural marks, and the gloss surfaces of commercial paint products, point towards the intersection of fascinations. These hinge on the relationship between form and function. The overall effect takes advantage of the relational nature of colour, and the nature of paintings object hood, to look at the conflict between art as an autonomous medium, and art in relation to life. "Double Happiness" is
a Chinese symbol with a rich cultural history. In 2005 Danny Rolph
integrated the symbol into one of his paintings, for its graphic
qualities, not knowing its past or its English translation. Click here if you would like to download the .jpg of the exhibition poster. Originality is reified; so is its creator
- Group Exhibition - Curated by Allison Beddoes
This exhibition at Hollow is being developed in response to John Berger's statement in The Shape of a Pocket. The 'white cube' gallery space has been regarded as an unchallenged arena of discourse: The white cube was traditionally seen as an emblem of the estrangement of the artist from a society to which the gallery also provides access. It is a space with a direct line to the timeless, a set of conditions, a place deprived of location, a magic chamber, a concentration of the mind. It preserves the possibility of art. Brian O'Docherty states here that with postmodernism, the gallery space was no longer 'neutral'. The wall becomes a membrane through which aesthetic and commercial values 'osmotically exchange… the white wall's apparent neutrality is an illusion.' It stands for a community with common ideas and assumptions. Artist and audience are invisibly outstretched in 2D on a white ground, grey floors and artificial lighting. This exhibition seeks to demonstrate the procedure of montage: the notion of superimposed elements disrupting contexts that invert the interruption of action. These artworks will counteract as an illusion for the viewer. The spectator recognises the disparity of a real situation with satisfaction and astonishment. Collage has been regarded as a revolutionary formal innovation in artistic representation that has occured in our century. The interest of collage as a device for criticism resides in the incorporation of an actual fragment that remains 'representational' while breaking the illusion of realism. These tangible and non-illusionistic objects present a new and original source of interplay between artistic expressions and the experience of the everyday world. An unpredicted and significant step in bringing art and life closer to becomes a simultaneous experience. To lift a certain number of elements, whether they are from original works, objects, or pre-existing messages, and integrate them in a new creation in order to produce an original totality manifesting ruptures of diverse sorts. I see this project as an opportunity to use the space as a place of contemplation, consideration and imagination. A group of artists will work in the space, applying themselves and their work directly onto and within the architecture of the gallery. Artists include: Sam Adams currently studying at the Royal Academy of Arts. His work explores the notion of the body in relation to pre-existing architecture. Informed by psychogeography and Situationist International. His works are ephemeral interventions that propose to change or alter our perceptions of the everyday. Further information to follow Casey & McAree are two Irish artists based in Birmingham. They produce work both collaboratively and individually, and run the artist project space Colony in Birmingham city. These installations feature a diverse juxtaposition of materials, referencing art historical practices including Romanticism and Expressionism in an analysis of contemporary practice. Recent exhibitions include All at once, together, at the same time, Colony 2005; Landscape, ongoing external poster project at major European cultural festivals, 2005-; C2, Crawford Gallery, Cork City Ireland December 2004 - January 2005 (McAree); The End is the Beginning is the End, Colony, Birmingham, November 2004; EV+A: Imagine Limerick 2004 (McAree); Offer it all up, our madness, that will be crushed, on this land that has come to be called chaos unzipped, Birmingham, May 2004 Liane Lang is currently near the completion of her study at the Royal Academy and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is an exploration of photographic narratives through a succession of environments. Implemented body parts are set within each scene and are sympathetically replace by the fascination of a real event. Each piece occupies the dialectic between the real and replica, the authentic and the artificial. James Rawlinson has recently completed his MA at Loughborough University. His work with collections of documentation, advertising and the element of drawing, capturing moments and incidents of the everyday dominates his work as it questions our existence.
Hollow Salon 2005
The Hollow Salon will also function as an alternative to the mainstream, providing a forum for expression and giving voice to a new generation of artists not always represented within the standard art world structure. Roderick Barton has been involved in setting up various art events in the past 2 years most notably the successful Guildhouse warehouse show in 2004. James Bradshaw is the Director of Hollow Contemporary Art and has extensive experience as both a curator and artist, having exhibited both nationally and internationally. Stuff Becomes - Group Exhibition - Curated
by John Summers and Will Stein.
Jessie Flood-Paddock EGO - James Bradshaw Hollow Contemporary Art presents the first opportunity to view works by its Director, James Bradshaw in the solo exhibition, EGO Curated by Roderick Barton. Bradshaw's paintings are genuinely humorous, each have a joke contained within, but, his paintings are have a hidden narrative. The faux-naivety lures the viewer into a false sense of security, the true extent of the theme is only apparent when the viewer is too closely endeared to it to be able to escape. Bradshaw takes the viewer on an emotional Journey, presenting images which are, at once, self paradoxical, happy and sad, embracing and rejecting, heartening and sinister. He relishes the tensions created between the subtlety of his touch and the harshness of his drawing, creating both delicate and crude gestures. To some extent, Bradshaw's works are somewhat reassuring. It manages to successfully make light of the serious themes of life, death, god, religion, love and hate. Curator, Roderick Barton has initiated various art events over the past two years in and around London. Bradshaw has created an exclusive limited edition for Hollow Contemporary, which is available from the gallery directly.
Brendon Lyons
Brendan Lyons' paintings are made of artists' paint only. The
entire surface, structure, and supports consist of artists' paint
alone. The gallery spaces appear to be littered with the remnants of previously installed works. Fragments of paintings remain attached to the wall by abandoned staples, tape, and blu-tack. Some areas are marked out or isolated by hazard tape. Picture hooks remain in place, without their absent paintings. However, on closer inspection, all elements are revealed as artists' paint alone. The paintings deal with issues of perception and implied space. Being viewed as a body of work, they combine to unsettle the viewer in confronting them with an unease as to their location. The works question the viewer?s relationship to the space and the time which they exist within it. Separately, each piece offers subtle signifiers as to its own creation and questions certain oppositions such as; what is internal and external, positive and negative, surface and structure.
Will Stein & John Summers Hollow Contemporary Art presents their inaugural show which brings together artists Will Stein and John Summers. These two artists achieve a notion of beauty through works that could be seen as grotesque (on the part of Summers) and esoteric (on the part of Stein) Despite, and perhaps even because of the aesthetic challenges they present to the viewer, the paintings and sculptures in this show are certainly alluring and enthralling, and it seems the exhibition is able to tip our conceived view of the beautiful. Stein will show five recent paintings, each displaying a concern with the nature of the creative process, and the inevitable ridiculousness and joy and confusion and emancipation that this ongoing ritual entails. The works are multi layered, expressive, and instinctive, and achieve a tight if often inexplicable focus. Summers will be showing three floor pieces that continue his
exploration of the language of skin and flesh. From the instant
visceral sensations of Low Rider to the dark urban Bling Bling
of Nightclub, he has chopped, cut and pushed these forms to express
and enhance the compacted energy that lurks within them. |
