5 artists show 1 Large painting alongside 2 accompanying small pieces.
In extreme times, show extreme art, go big or go small. This has been designed be a playful presentation of some fabulous new work by some favourite gallery artists. Pippa Blake, Fred Coppin, Charlotte Edsell, Katharine Le Hardy and Calum McClure.
(We have been lucky enough to receive a few additional works, and space allowed, so they have been included!)
Pippa Blake's (b.1954) paintings are imbued with soulfulness, and the moments captured in them feel unstable or unfixed, as though the viewer is witnessing the scene from a peripheral viewpoint. The paintings describe uncanny scenes that are at once familiar but so fleeting that they remain just out of reach. The poignancy that comes from this detached perspective evokes feelings that give the work its power and potency. Pippa Blake makes atmospheric paintings about moving through the landscape; the fleeting glimpses this reveals and the emotional journeys it triggers. These paintings are snatches of scenery glimpsed on video calls between Blake and her daughter in New Zealand while unable to travel and visit during the lockdowns of 2020/21.
Fred Coppin (b.1989) captures an eternal sense of optimism in his work through a distinctive combination of amplified colour and playful forms. Coppin’s paintings are tied together by an uplifting impulse to dissect, exaggerate and reassemble the world around us. Whilst his painting is most often representational and nods to great British painters, the careful integration of glitches, geometry and pastel tones offer a quality that firmly roots his work in the digital era. These pieces in 1 Large : 2 small recall moments while travelling in Japan in 2018, a ferociously cold water swim and a stare off between a boy and a crow. Coppin describes how as a traveller in Japan he felt like an observer, rather than a participator.
Charlotte Edsell (b.1971) is known for her elegant gestural painting. Her work is concerned with a ‘felt sense’ of the world, the physical interaction and relationship of brush, body and surface, resulting in a culmination of images, memories and senses that give expression to life in a way that words cannot.Eugene Gendlin, the American philosopher talks about felt sense as a bodily awareness of the ongoing life process, a living interaction in the world. Edsell’s work is about energy; energy of colour, energy of light, energy of experience. The energy of her practice as a teacher of Qigong is ever present.Having travelled extensively in her earlier life and with Bahamian heritage, her bodily relationship with place and memory is pivotal to her practice.Bahamian light floods into her work, and her experiences in Bali and Nepal and appreciation of Eastern values shapes her thoughts.
Charlotte Edsell's ARTSY viewing room
Katharine Le Hardy (b.1981). During the early months of 2020, with access to the physical world restricted by a national lockdown, Katharine found herself absorbed by historical images of past times. Partially induced by memory and nostalgia she started painting ferris wheels and hula hooping children. This has triggered a new enquiry, an investigation of the space between the real, the past, the lost and the hopeful. Currently documenting deserted funfairs, and researching the history of play, Katharine observes the forlornness of a deserted place of play and how this conflicts with our presupposed associations of jubilance, how our memories entwine with our fantasies. This observation of historical significance encountering something more intangible is central to Katharine’s new journey.
Calum McClure (b.1987). These pieces are part of an ongoing series of work looking at public places, which touch upon themes of wealth and possession, as well as nature reclaiming these spaces. Scaffolded Pagoda and Plant and Ladder both show scenes from Kew Gardens, they look at our relationship with nature and our desire to both improve and study it for scientific reasons. In a recent interview McClure said, “Botanical gardens are of particular interest because they tell us a lot about ourselves; the need to classify…., a want for nature to be close to us and brought into our towns and cities, or a desire to use these places for recreation and reflection.” In Plant and Ladder the plant is confined by the glasshouse. In Scaffolded Pagoda the pagoda is covered and its beauty temporarily hidden from view. McClure decided to imagine the scene at night, when the gardens are closed, to add a stillness to the painting. Deep Pool is of an abandoned country estate in Fife.
