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Henley Festival |
Sculpture Lawn|
Festival Gallery|
Riverside Gallery|
Reach Gallery visual arts 2008: Towpath Marquee
Towpath Marquee sponsored by:
Red Gallery
Fiona Morley
My work is a three dimensional interpretation of drawing. Having a strong background in drawing, and as a result of specialising in sculpture at college, I discovered that the use of wire brought together both disciplines and enabled the expansion of the former into a three dimensional realm. Wire engenders a malleable, spontaneous way of working that allows the manipulation of line to create form. Using wire, the definition of form comes as much from the voids as the material itself. The human form dominates my work. I am interested in the body’s endless complexity and try to convey a different persona in each creation. The human form is transient and ultimately fragile; the web-like weave of wire is able to communicate this nature. Lines in wire, and the corresponding shadows they throw, bring an ethereal element to the subject. This further conveys the delicateness of the form. For me, the body is a vehicle inside which life exists, rather than a rigid, permanent thing. Cat James MA
My work is inspired by different aspects of mixed up memories of my childhood. I remember as a child being read stories such as The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz and wishing I could have the same fantastic adventures as Alice and Dorothy. The silk-screens create a fantasy sequence of a little boy and girl, they are the embodiment of my love of the classic Fairytale character, and their bodies disappear and reappear. In the male and female Torsos the figures are covered with imagery from children’s annuals from the ‘70s and ‘80s, a lot being from 1978, the year I was born. The other singular female torso is covered with dress pattern cutting, from memories of my mother using these to make my own clothes as a child. My latest work comes from memories of watching my mother sew and of visits to my grandparents’ house and their old-fashioned living room and wallpaper. Sewing directly onto wallpaper and canvas, they are redolent of a childish sense of wonder, creating a fairytale atmosphere out of the simplest of means. Tom Scanlon
”The paintings/images that attract me are the ones which are not immediately accessible to the eye. Ones in which a little mystery lies behind in terms of technique or form. In order to achieve such an effect I have abandoned brushes and use only a palette knife. I try to capture the complexity and beauty of the built environment in this manner. The result is a highly textured, colourful painting consisting of both magnitude and direction, almost 3” thick.” - Tom Scanlon Tom Scanlon was born in Glasgow in 1963. He now lives and works in Paisley. He paints city and landscapes in heavy impasto oils using only a palette knife. This creates a richly textured image in vivid colour. Thomas is a member of the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) and is a regular exhibitor at the Paisley Museum, the MacMillan Art Exhibition, Glasgow and in various UK Galleries. Ottmar Hörl
Ottmar Hörl says his work as a sculptor is like a public corporation. People acquire a part of the installation and thereby participate in a communicative process. He does not see culture as a hierarchical conception, but rather struggles to see that as many people in our society as possible come to terms with art. Living in a world of symbols, emblems, names, and meanings, the word art is almost automatically associated with museums or galleries, with the self-contained, the lockedin. Ottmar Hörl’s conception of work in public spaces breaks through this barrier. Sam Loggie
African-born, Sam Loggie studied Fine Art at The Johannesburg School of Arts, before settling in London and studying at the Slade School of Art (UCL) and completing a course in Figurative Sculpture. Sam enjoyed sculpting as a serious hobby while forging her career in public relations, but she left the corporate world 3 years ago and took up sculpting as a profession. Her distinctive way of modelling the surface of the clay imbues her work with movement and character. Although classical in inspiration, her specialisation in strong female and male figurative studies are also suitable for a contemporary environment. Penny Warden
Penny paints her images with a maximum of spontaneity and energetic expression. This sense of movement and vibrancy, which is Penny’s trademark, is especially evident in her oil paintings of ballet dancers. In 2004 as a ‘rising artist’, Penny was chosen to exhibit her work in St Paul’s Cathedral alongside Tracy Emin and other prominent artists, in an innovative and exciting national exhibition called “Presence: Images of Christianity for the Third Millennium.” In 2005 Penny was commissioned by Blackburn Cathedral for “a major project of national significance” consisting of the permanent display of fifteen 6ft figurative paintings based on the Stations of the Cross. Garry Raymond Pereira
These are a series of new works made on location along the North Norfolk coast line. They were all made from December 2006 to late April 2007. During this period, parts of the coastline of East Anglia had storms, about which I have tried to portray a sense of after and before, although hopefully still trying to keep a sense of ‘everydayness. Texture has become important to this series of work, more so than my other paintings. The surface has enabled the work to take on its own sense, making almost pictures within pictures, rather like the idea of cloud reading. ‘As Strange as Angels’-Technically it has been forgiving and has lent itself to location painting. I hope that the work sits as comfortably on a white wall as it did in and behind those dunes. Richard Southall
Richard Southall was always exceptional at art and drawing, but due to undiagnosed dyslexia, almost fifteen years passed before his artistic ability was to find an outlet. Desperate to follow his passion, he took a sculpture course run by the artist Stuart Osborne. The course was predominantly figurative with great emphasis being placed on direct study from natural form and life drawing. Four years in higher education followed, where he received a First Class Honours Degree in education. Robin Eckardt
Robin Eckardt’s paintings are contemporary, abstract mixed media, inspired by the first ten years of her life in the Caribbean, where the memories of vibrant colours and an idyllic life style have remained with her; while her cityscapes reflect her obvious passion for a vast and complex subject. Robin mixes anything and everything in order to create new, unexpected and exciting effects. With a BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art from Bath Spa University College, her style has developed through extensive years of study in addition to her natural instinct. |
