Micro-Macro Vision

Works by Beata Kozlowska, Jean Elliot, Elaine Mullings & Tomasz Stando

Private View: Friday 13th of March 2009 – 6 pm to 11 pm
Exhibition runs from: Friday 13th to 19th of Match 2009
Gallery Opening Hours: Sat, Mon, Tues, Wed: 2.30 pm – 6.30 pm
Last day of Exhibition: Thurs 19th of March: 11.00am to 5.00pm

The unifying element between each exhibiting artists’ work lies within their preoccupation with the dialogue between the formal and conceptual. Each artist explores within their own media how structure and composition mirror metaphor, underlying visual and hidden cultural language. Their vision focuses on the examination of the tiniest gesture being reflected within the biggest of conventions and visa versa:

Micro-Macro Vision

Beata Kozlowska (Recent graduate artist from Camberwell College of Arts, 2008), currently Postgraduate Diploma Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art and Design) Her initial practice has been deeply rooted in examining the process of how our bodies express and articulate gesture. More recent works are particularly concerned with the exploration of the ‘feminine’ within form, texture and pattern. “My current work is at once schizophrenic, temporal and fragmentary. The installation involves a wide range of mediums: painting, sculpture, ready-made objects, cut-out forms scattered and suspended, appealing to all the senses… The main criterion for me is to establish the rules of the game and be able to modify them for the sake of a ‘feminine’ aesthetic. I am the ruler; I re-establish the illogical order of the (quasi-linguistic) GAME…” (Kozlowska 2008)

Tomasz Stando (Graduated from Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1980.) Working as a painter and graphic artist, he has obtained a Grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York and since 1984 his works have been exhibited in Poland, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Germany and Czech Republic. Over the years he has created a collection of paintings on board and paper, as well as pencil drawings. For Stando ‘Gesture’ has become an artistic attitude, a state of being, an act of experiencing as well as losing one’s bearings. “For me the gesture is an act of creating colour, a test force, pressure, resistance and excitement. The colour – involving gesture transforms into a painting.” (Stando 2008)

Jean Elliot (Recent graduate artist from Camberwell College of Arts, 2008) Within her painting practice, Elliot explores the crossover between abstraction and figuration. Initial reference is sought from illustrations in Gray’s Anatomy. The artist particularly looks for suggestions of figures/shapes in images of fragmented parts of the body. The palette used for her work forms an environment that is created with an over exaggeration of colour: Turquoise and cerulean blue for sky, cadmium reds, yellows and white for a body. The small scale of the paintings reflects the fact that they are details of a whole, and that they represent something intimate, and normally hidden.

Elaine Mullings (Currently studying at Camberwell College of Arts) Mullings’ work challenges the definition of what is thought of as valuable, beautiful or useful. Discarded objects are rescued, manipulated and reworked. Her practice has evolved from a fascination with the transformative potential of mundane materials and from her love of form and space. Further motivation lies in her desire to create new forms and physical interventions that reveal the poetics of very simple things. An additional aspect of her practice is also underpinned by concerns about the complex issues around exploitation and prejudice. “I want to explore the mechanisms that allow us to absorb irrational beliefs, myths and the prejudices that influence and possibly restrict our understanding and ways of being.” (Mullings 2008)

Nearest Buses from Brixton/Camberwell: 35 (From Clapham Junction), 45 (From Kings X), 345 (From Sth Ken to Peckham), P4 (Brixton to Lewisham) Nearest Train: LoughborougJunction (Thames Link, via King X to Sutton)