OCCUPIED ORDER
Kate Barsby
Victoria Browne
James Ryan
Simon Haddock
9th Sep– 2nd Oct 2010
Visually we collect endless shapes and patterns, images and forms, that we generate, recognise and then collage in our mind-scape. We like to order, structure and compartmentalise our memories; we use them to navigate ourselves through our physical and cognitive world. These are triggers for actions and direction either trivial or important that define us in the world.
Occupied Order brings together 4 artists in an expressional journey through
our environment whether domestic, urban/rural or political. Victoria Browne’s
beautifully crafted polymergravure prints, the result of a three year
project researching CERN are a stunning example of this as is Kate Barnsby's
installation exploring language in a simulated world.
James Ryan intelligently paints layers of geometric patterns on fabric
which have emerged from the man-made environment and structure. Perhaps
these abstract planes are thoughts that reflect on the city surface, or
an emotional positioning that we find, or self remembering – ontological
and phenomenological. Then Simon Haddock’s bombastic explosions
of colour and form take us on an exciting journey through landscape. We
are shown the energy of an all-encompassing existence. This is not mapping
or landscape art, in Occupied Order we are shown layers of time and life
within the nature of being.
Kate Barsby has been specially commissioned to create
a piece for the window space in the gallery, she is currently studying
for her Masters Degree in Fine Art at Central St. Martins. Her practice
explores the language and idioms of production and consumption within
an increasingly simulated environment. Kate positions her practice at
the ‘interface’ between the concrete and abstract, between
technology and humanity, utilising materials as diverse as CGI animation,
live trees, spangles and "cliches" to explore this complex and
collaborative exchange.
Victoria Browne’s work acts as a diversion from
the increasingly rapid and speculative media response to current socio-political
events. This re-writing relies on a qualitative research methodology,
spending time in the milieu of a place to build up a map of experience
in which perception of the routine or mundane become unfamiliar and new.
In reference to Theses on the Philosophy of History (1942), Walter Benjamin
conjectures that the present and its experience are temporarily ‘frozen’
in historical or actual material and phenomena. These ‘splinters
of reality’ are the collated visual material that becomes created
anew during the course of interpretation.
James Ryan creates
intricate geometric paintings through the overlaying of transparent planes
of colour. Within the paintings there is a somewhat traceable account
of actions. A readable overlapping of layers that generate unforeseen
nuances of colour and a three dimensional space that opens up with a distorted
perspective and logic. Recent work has seen the introduction of checked
fabrics, which act as a ready-made grid, yet undermine the work’s
fine art credentials with hints of the domestic.
Simon Haddock works in painting and in three dimensions,
operating somewhere between modernist stridency and dilapidated romantic
fervour. Haddock is interested in the rational modularity of the modern,
as it aims to facilitate and simplify, yet he is driven to obscure the
association between form and intent.
Kate Barsby's
Simon Haddock
James Ryan
Victoria Browne