joseph scissorhands

Sunday, 15 November 2020

Tom Faulkner: Butterflies Through Other Eyes #53

Modern furniture designs from his Papillon range by Tom Faulkner. They were inspired by the observation of mass butterfly migration on visits to north America, and the structural patterns found in their wings.

Sunday, 8 November 2020

Winter Show: Cambridge Contemporary Art

Felicity

It's that time in the calendar again when certain galleries are staging their end of year Christmas and Winter shows. I was delighted to have been invited to submit work to the Winter Show currently at Cambridge Contemporary Art which opened last weekend. Unfortunately a twist of fate has seen 'the science' prove that cases of the COVID virus have risen of late. As a result Cambridge Contemporary Art were forced to close their doors to the public with galleries being designated as 'non-essential'. They will be closed until the lifting of lockdown 2.0 (hopefully in early December). Despite the circumstances I have a variety of newly created pieces making their debut at the Winter Show. The larger of the pieces (measuring 50cm x 50cm, supplied in white, ash wooden box frames), are silver-leafed, (gold-leaf options also available), and are part of new developments in my work in which I use the syntax of art and optical activity to prompt a psychological read. Circles of spots have been incorporated to represent heightened states of transcendence, bliss, or perhaps glimpses into other consciousnesses as suggested by the individual titles of the works. Regular readers of the blog will have already been introduced to Rêve, Rapture and Ecstacy, and the inspiration behind their creation in earlier posts. With the new pieces depicted here - Euphoria and Felicity, I wanted to continue the use of the circular dot matrix to represent states of nirvana, but in these pieces I have begun to disrupt the matrix, creating a rift, in which the butterflies continue to explore a sense of transcendence in both the spaces in among the spot matrix and that within the picture frame.

Euphoria

Rêve

As well as the larger pieces above, there are also smaller pieces (measuring 23cm x 23cm framed) of mine available in the Winter Show. If you are interested in purchasing any of the work featured you can reserve, order, or commission pieces online through the lovely people at Cambridge Contemporary Art, and have it safely delivered to you in the same way the gallery did during the original spring/summer lockdown. Gallery contact details can be seen below. Once again, stay safe, stay well, and let's defeat this virus!

Lineate (Copper leaf)

Lineate (Silver leaf)

Lineate (Red)

Coronet

20/20 Vision

Winter Show

until December 31st 2020

Cambridge Contemporary Art

6 Trinity Street

Cambridge

CB2 1SU

Tel: 01223 324 222

www.cambridgegallery.co.uk

Sunday, 1 November 2020

Polly Morgan: How to Behave at Home

Polly Morgan - Understand Your Audience, (detail)

"Confined to our homes this spring, communicating via binary code, engaging with friends, lovers and family in two-dimensional hyper-reality, our avatars have taken over, increasingly shaped by the rapidly evolving social strictures that dictate or lives" - Polly Morgan

"Social media and the COVID pandemic provide the context for new abstract sculptures that use the highly decorative hides of snakes and the trompe l'oeil designs in nail artistry to comment on the disparity between surface and reality. In an age where our digital selves are experienced by more people than our physical selves, Morgan uses veneers as a metaphor to examine our need to contain, control and conceal. The exhibition takes as its title an admonition from a book on Victorian etiquette, and in her juxtapositions of animal forms constrained within man-made structures, the artist highlights the unavoidable creep of nature in our lives and the impossibility of absolute restraint. Corset-like concrete and cast polystyrene structures struggle to contain taxidermy snakes that contort and spill from openings, alluding to the distorting effect that social media has on our physical selves."

Polly Morgan: How to Behave at Home, installation view

I made a first visit to the Bomb Factory Art Foundation to see these sinuous, serpentine sculptures with a range of highly tactile surfaces, in this exhibition by sculptor Polly Morgan. Though usually known for the use of taxidermy in her work, appearances here are deceptive, as the snakes exhibited here are polyurethane replicas which still look startlingly real. The concrete blocks and polystyrene packaging blocks which house the writhing, knotted bodies of the serpents are also not quite what they seem to be. The contrasting shiny and hard surface textures, as well as the natural and artificial nature of the materials and subjects makes for some very interesting juxtapositions. The large-scale photographs of Morgan's hands with ubiquitous decorative fake nails flaying actual snakes to reveal the tender flesh underneath are strangely visceral and erotically charged.

Understand Your Audience

Understand Your Audience, (detail)

Consider the Risk

Consider the Risk, (detail)

Consider the Risk

Polly Morgan: How to Behave at Home, installation view

Produce Valuable Content

Trusted Provider

Try Wearing Those Colours Too

MSQRD

retouchme

Face Changer

Every Other Dance

Trace your Route

Unite in a Common Goal

Polly Morgan: How to Behave at Home

until 2nd November

The Bomb Factory Art Foundation

Unit 2, 9-15 Elthorne Road

London

N19

Sunday, 25 October 2020

Ecstacy

Ecstacy

Welcome to Ecstacy - another new artwork created as a sister piece to Rapture, revealed last week on this blog. Ecstacy is similarly based on Phyllotaxis and Fibonacci spiral patterns found in nature, as well as Gestalt theories of visual perception. The rhythmic spiral patterns and saccadic eye movements made as the viewer reads this image are once again intended to evoke heightened emotional, transcendent states. Ecstacy has again been created to elicit a sense of movement through the patterning and placement of the spots, and careful positioning of the butterflies which lead your eyes around the piece. As with Rapture, each and every spot in the base matrix was patiently and individually positioned by being glued into place with the aid of a pair of fine tweezers. The lustrous gold/silver leaf spots in the base matrix appear to flicker and shimmer as the eyes travel across their surface and they reflect the light. I'm loving the high octane opulence and glamour of the decadent Art Deco era which is conjured up in this piece. Both Ecstacy and Rapture work so well as either stand alone pieces, or displayed together as a complementary pair. Ecstacy measures 50cm x 50cm in an ash wood box frame and is available in gold, silver and copper-leaf.

Ecstacy - (silver leaf, detail)

Ecstacy - (gold leaf, detail)

20/20 Vision

Sunday, 18 October 2020

The Rapture

Rapture

As an artist a vital part of my process is the actual act of looking. As a result I've recently begun to investigate aspects of visual perception to make sense of certain sensations experienced when the eye reacts to specific images. I've been particularly preoccupied with naturally occurring patterns and optics found in nature that trigger the eye into recognising certain rhythms which then prompt a psychological/emotional reaction in the viewer, such as states of bliss or transcendence. I've looked at Gestalt theory, the study of how we perceive a set of components and then organise them into wholes or patterns. In my research I became particularly interested in different types of eye movement, especially those known as saccadic movements, where the eye darts rapidly, jumping from one position in the picture frame to another when reading an image.

Having looked at a range of patterns found in nature I discovered I really liked those found in flower and seed heads where multiple spirals run both clockwise and anti-clockwise. These are known as Phyllotaxis spirals and can be generated from Fibonacci ratios. I like the hypnotic trance-like effects which occur in the vision generated by the saccadic movements of the eye tracing the rhythm and flow of these spiral patterns. I wanted to capture that very same transcendent, almost narcotic effect on the senses in parts of my work, and have used Fibonacci spirals and the Golden ratio as the basis of some new pieces of work involving spots. This first is Rapture, created in versions using gold, silver, and copper leaf with my signature butterflies on top adding to the sense of dramatic movement in the pieces. Dictionary definitions of the word 'rapture' include -"an expression or manifestation of ecstasy or passion, a state or experience of being carried away by overwhelming emotion, and a mystical experience in which the spirit is exalted to a knowledge of divine things," summing up precisely the feelings of transcendence I want the viewer to experience in looking at these new works. Each piece was created by the painstaking application of tiny, hand-gilded paper spots with a pair of fine tweezers to build up the pattern. Dear reader, it took the patience of a saint! However as I think you'll agree from the results it was well worth the effort. I particularly love the way the uneven light reflection off the individual dots creates a lustrous sheen adding to the sense of movement in not only the butterflies, but also the spot base matrix. Each Rapture artwork measures 50cm x 50cm, and comes supplied in an ash wood box frame. Contact me directly for further information with regards to availability or commissions if you are interested in this new work. Now you have experienced the Rapture, hold on to your hats, the next reveal will be a another spot piece with which I'll be transporting you to the heights of ecstacy...

Rapture, work in progress

Rapture, copper leaf, (detail)

Rapture, gold leaf, (detail)

Rapture, silver leaf, (detail)

20/20 Vision

Sunday, 11 October 2020

Georg Baselitz: Darkness Goldness

Georg Baselitz - Manipolare, 2019

"What's right in front of you? Hands!" - George Baselitz

To St James's to see this rather moving exhibition of painted hands by Georg Baselitz. There is a tradition among artists of depicting the importance of hands as agents of the manifestation of their creative output, as symbols of comunication, and as signs of the human presence, be it in ancient cave paintings, Renaissance paintings and drawings, or more expressive, abstracted imagery. All express the power, dexterity and creativity of humankind through the hand. Baselitz adds to this tradition with this tightly focused exhibition of a series of vibrant, golden hands looming large out of their inky-black backgrounds. Being surrounded by this series of paintings and wall-mounted sculptures in the White Cube space at Mason's Yard is like being in a sacred space, surrounded by a series of religious icons. These paintings have an emotional, abstract weight about them. They are created on an ambitious scale which is heartening to see given Baselitz's advanced years. Their execution in gold lends them a certain gravitas, and adds to that air of the sacred. There are some wonderful painterly textures and mark-making which make some of the hands resemble the gnarled, calloused, surfaces of the hands of manual labourers. Less successful in my opinion were the gilded, bronze wall sculptures named after famous painters whom Baselitz admires, which hang rather flaccidly from the walls. Their saving grace were the actual visible traces of the hands of the maker with their rough surface textures, and evidential marks of the artists' fingers clawing out the clay. Through the paintings though Baselitz does an excellent job of expressing the potency of hands as the agents of creativity.