A Place in Between
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Performances at Preview:
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Alicia de Malaga 8pm
Jones Tensini 8:15pm |
Exploring the interface of life and art
From 27th March to 1st April 2014, Espacio Gallery is delighted to present a group of emerging and established artists in a multimedia show exploring the ways in which art emerges from the inner life of the artist at times of transition.
Explaining the theme of the show, Curator and Gallery Director, Carlos de Lins says, “Art so often explores outer journeys in the landscapes of what we call the real world but for this show I wanted to invite the artists to look inside and to encounter their inner selves at times of transition.”
“The interface between life experience and the artistic process can be a strange mysterious world of half-glimpsed effects and ideas, but this is also the ‘place in between’ life events where creative sparks are born.”
To complement the exhibition, specially-commissioned performances from Espacio Gallery favourites, Jones Tensini and Alicia de Malaga will explore the theme of the show through their own personal narratives.
Collaborators
Krzysztof Cieslak and Ana Cockerill
Curated by Carlos de Lins
Explaining the theme of the show, Curator and Gallery Director, Carlos de Lins says, “Art so often explores outer journeys in the landscapes of what we call the real world but for this show I wanted to invite the artists to look inside and to encounter their inner selves at times of transition.”
“The interface between life experience and the artistic process can be a strange mysterious world of half-glimpsed effects and ideas, but this is also the ‘place in between’ life events where creative sparks are born.”
To complement the exhibition, specially-commissioned performances from Espacio Gallery favourites, Jones Tensini and Alicia de Malaga will explore the theme of the show through their own personal narratives.
Collaborators
Krzysztof Cieslak and Ana Cockerill
Curated by Carlos de Lins
Barnabas, Untitled I
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Jenny Browne
In my work I look at natural structures in entomology, using forms that had died naturally which I then carefully preserved. The series named Barnabas to give the beetle an identity, much like a person or a pet, making his story personal. The hand set beetle in my work represents our desire to preserve life, to keep hold of both the physical being but also the memory of what once was. The pins are the things in life that keep us grounded such as the children we have, the careers we choose, love and decisions we make in life. We all live knowing there is an end, nothing truly lasts forever. The shadow cast over the beetle is the metaphorical shadow cast by our decisions, the ever present reality of death. This reality differs depending on perception; as the shadows cast differ on the light present. (Website) |
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Yvonne Overton
I was drawn to submit work to A Place in Between as I felt it offered the opportunity to revisit a series of paintings that I started to develop eight years ago. As my confidence in the process has grown, I can now relax and allow the repetitive and mindful application of delicate and specialised materials to become a meditation on the marks and simplified lines that reveal the form. This work allows me contemplative space, and pause, from the more complex and intuitive landscape painting that has become my practice in recent years. The moment of completion is when an illuminated orb floats effortlessly within the void, suggesting the tension and harmony of a Zen Koan. Making this work strikes a deep chord of compassion within me that I hope can be shared with the viewer. A simple and silent landscape of the heart. (Website) |
Compassion
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Thy Eternal Summer Shall Not Fade
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Susan Lizotte
I am an artist living and working in Los Angeles, California. I am also a contributing writer for Figure/Ground Communication. At the moment I am curating an online exhibition scheduled for January-March 2015 for the Torrance Art Museum. My submissions for “A Place in Between” were painted as a friend died, so my state of mind was in flux. I felt as though I was moving from life to death to life again. My paintings were a way to explore that mental movement in paint. (Website) |
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Nancy Moniz
My interpretation of 'A Place in Between' is a movement through time – My journey/experience from childhood understood through dreams and explored now in the present. |
Night the angel got his wings
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Departure 2014, Image 4
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Frikkx
The work was created at the time I got so tired of the realism of traditional photography. I got so sick of the thousands and thousands of photos that display the same thing over and over again. The work is my attempt to move away from reality and move toward something else that I am not sure what it is or where it is but it is far away from noise of the city. I wanted to reconstruct reality to escape for a little while and give you a chance to do the same. I left names as vague as possible so I would not force my thoughts on you and leave you enough space to figure out what you see in the work. (Website) |
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Ryan Mehigan
I’ve come to a stage in my young life where I realise I’m a lot more aware of everything and have more of an opinion on more than one thing, and that also I hadn’t really started creating anything that reflected that or me. I started concentrating on my more angry feelings towards of a lot of things in society, things like how I hate hooded kids that go around intimidating anyone, stabbing and killing innocent people, how our skies are filled with smoke from cigarettes and fumes from cars and factories, and how society is just a big comical joke in which nothing really makes sense and that we just accept how things work so we can get by, make a living, pay bills and feed our families, but we don’t really stop to see what’s really wrong with society until to media tells us in their twisted brainwashing ways. This is what my art is based on and my way of showing my view on society and the world I see. (Website) |
Clouds
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Spiritual Maze - Broken No 7
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Ellen Jewell
These photographs are from a larger series called 'Spiritual Maze' The images document my perceived pressures I felt while depressed and my response to therapy I received. I wanted to capture my feelings of loss, confusion, conflict and hope within the series. The themes in my work are always personal. My art explores different aspects of my life and pays tribute to people and places that have inspired me. Collage and found objects play a large part of my work. I feel that using everyday objects as materials adds insight and depth of meaning to what is being created. (Website) |
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Vivien Phelan
Following a successful nursing career I decided to study ceramics and glass achieving a BA. My parents had not allowed me to take up an offer of scholarship in the arts so I embraced the opportunity. I have tried to use my imagination in creating colour and life in everyday objects such as bowls, mugs plates and have moved onto other studies. I like people, I like watching their behaviour, I like the quirkiness of the English language, I like making people smile and I like working on the potter's wheel, so mix all these "likes" together and you arrive at my figurative similes such as "barking mad" "nosey parker" art of love and fun and others featuring animals. Around this theme I have fashioned animal subjects in rustic settings. The animals peering at us through fences. Are they captive? Or just interested in us or the world? (Website) |
She's barking mad
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Untitled
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Curaro
A place in between represents the distance that separates Tuscany, where I used to live and London, where I'm currently living. They are different places, different worlds and different points of view. |
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Carla Gradiski
…and then I want to open the door to everything else. I still wish to unnoticeably touch the story of every wrinkle on your face, and retain the expression of your eyes. I do not wish to invade your space, but take the meaning of your existence. When you are sleeping on the street in this cold night, I feel that world is more homeless without you than you without home. I can photograph you in every different corner of this world, like many of the others showing interest in a drunken smile on your face, with sorrow and pain, in love and war. We will always be the same. One among so many…you and me in the same photograph, me invisible through every feeling and story You tell the world. (Website) |
We look before and after / And pine for what is not / Our sincerest laughter / With some pain is fraught / Our sweetest songs are those / that tell of saddest thought
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Torn
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Omar Obaid
We all have that hidden place that we escape to, that "Place In Between". For me, my place is my art studio where I have the freedom to create original works of art that translate emotion in forms words cannot describe. My submissions for this exhibition were influenced by my childhood. I was born in Baghdad and experienced the chaos of a warzone while growing up until I moved to tranquil London. I have experimented with new techniques to visualise and share my memories through my art which is a true reflection of my journey in life. (Website) |
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Silka Uddenberg
I've always been intrigued by my fellow travellers on buses and trains. A communal area that really only have two rules, it’s never ever too full to squeeze in one more person and don’t you dare make eye contact. What are their thoughts, who are they? This is the one place where personal space are so invaded but still most people manage to zoom out completely. I decided to paint my impressions, the people going from A to B. Their “place in between” As a keen cyclist I don’t often use public transport but when I do, I see it as a luxury. So I’ve chosen bright colours to high light that not everything about commuting and transport is a bad experience. (Website) |
Audrey
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Triptych - Desolate Ochre
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James Mackenzie
The ‘Desolate’ series of paintings are largely inspired by the Northumberland coast and countryside. My aim is to create landscapes that are at once visually attractive, displaying a variety of colour tones and textures but which, on closer inspection are all hauntingly empty of life. The predominant colours in the ‘Desolate’ series are not entirely chosen by me at the outset but often suggest themselves as I begin work. I am very passionate about this style of painting, which I refer to as my ‘natural’ style. I feel that this ‘natural’, almost spontaneous painting style allows my subconscious to take hold and I am able to create landscapes, which previously existed only as memories or unconscious recollection. The pieces that I am exhibiting are works, which I feel, represent a real transition from the unconscious mind to conscious thought and at this stage seem to me to be part of longer journey. There are I am sure more Desolate landscapes to come! (Website) |
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Dima Gorbunov
The theme for any work should come from within, it must come from experience, and it could be a single emotion or a thought which in return triggers the rest of the thinking process. After all, the image on the canvas is merely a form of embodiment of my experiences and thoughts which I acquired without my own consent and my duty is to convey this to my audience in a cultural, accessible language and include them into my thinking process. The state of mind that my paintings provoke is more important to me than the meaning of the image, as the meaning is only an auxiliary thread in perception of a product. A key theme in my latest works is the night life of the city, where a person tries to escape into their own romantic world of unconsciousness. In which, amongst countless lights, dark windows and neon signs of the inviting places of entertainment, they lose themselves in time and free themselves of their daily worries and torments, completely dissolving in this interval of the night. Under the fluorescent lamps you cannot see the suffering, confusion and their desperation to find love or just to satisfy their fantasies and desires. Perhaps only under the darkness of the night, one feels at peace, fooling themselves that what they are looking for at night is happiness, when it is just an illusion. (Website) |
CASHDESK
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Saint
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Marco Nardi
A place in Between is where my mind lies, and gets the inspiration. It’s a "Demi-Monde", where my strange surrealistic characters come from, where the appearance of People and places I see in reality is blended with significances. The light hitting them, their aspect or features become grotesque or Allegoric, almost vehicles of my opinions about Social-Economical, even Political conditions. (Website) |
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Alexandre Santacruz
I am a London based artist from Portugal, trained in traditional and contemporary ceramic art. I’ve changed and diversified over the years and now work with a very wide range of media. I use many different techniques to create work which represents my life and is like a diary for me. The work in this exhibition represents a difficult period when I was between jobs and relationships. But as so often at those times my creativity was stimulated, and I returned to working with collage for the first time in some years. The place in between is both the period of my life when unemployed and single but also the creative period when taking printed material in its original form and changing it into something new. Although a dark time flashes of colour, light and texture break through my work representing the positive and affirmative. Eroticism features heavily, playfully suggesting sexuality and fun, and transformation into something unexpected. (Website) |
bodyscape
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Volutas II
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Carmen Penido
My paintings in their elaborate design and rich tapestry wonderfully reflect Brazil’s baroque past as evoked by the blue tiles to be found in many notable buildings. A place/connection between past and present. (Website) |
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Alicia de Malaga
Dancing flamenco has always been part of my life, while living in Malaga or during the last 20 years in the UK. Flamenco is my “Place in Between” as I equally love to do foot work listening to Dire Straits or to the Gipsy Kings. |
La Malaguena
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Untitled
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Miguel Ivorra
The videos and photographs I’m presenting in this exhibition were created in my hometown Elche (Alicante) Spain. I have been living, as well as producing artwork in the UK for at least the past five years. Taking a distance from my origins has helped me view my culture differently. What was so familiar and normal then, has become very special to me now. As a result, I choose and embrace the things I really miss and love. That is what has inspired me to start a series of works during my visits back in Elche, and then to process and finalise them in London. This artwork stands in between two countries, as well as my past and my present, bridging where I belonged and belong to. (Website) |
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Mike Dodson
I am educationally and intellectually something of a vagabond, but have always carried with me a juxtaposed fear of and fascination with insanity – both personally and collectively. This exhibition has allowed me to explore the perceived concept of normality, and that which lies within the dichotomies of the human condition. (Website) |
Vacuum
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Void
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Dean Mills
The painting chosen for the exhibition A Place in Between, is an exploration of different spatial elements within my still-life composition; the vase of flowers in the foreground symbolising beauty and inner happiness juxtaposed with the uncompromising blackness of the void which lies behind, exposing the fragility of life in the middle. (Website) |
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Selma Gusmao
I have been studying and working with art throughout my life. The works presented in this exhibition reflect a time in which I am mostly interested in drawing, painting and interior design. (Website) |
Colombina
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Blanco sobre blanco nº 1
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Anahi Rodriguez
Participating in this exhibition for me is summarising a journey started many years ago in the research and use of new materials as integral part of my art works. Developing an abstract aesthetic on my canvases, through materials, textures and colours, I try to induce different states of mind in the viewer. With a concern for abstraction and the visual aspects derived from their form and colour, I delve into the use of unusual materials in picture making. Sands of different thicknesses, pigments and fabrics of varied textures, are the main protagonists of the paintings exhibited. In them, matter is no longer seen as a mean to represent an idea, but it becomes the idea itself. The use of these materials allows the creation of balanced and consistent structures. They provide real weight and presence to the compositions. Materials used in these paintings are a constant mix of natural and artificial, man-made materials. A love for nature and for everything exotic and mysterious the natural world offers is mixed with an understanding of the world we created and in which we live in. The viewer is left with an open interpretation of the art-work, with more questions than answers. (Website) |
