ABOUT THE ARTISTS AND WORKS IN THE SHOW: Jonathan Armour’s practice is an experimental exploration of man’s body-surface which probes the interfaces with which that body connects with the world. The body and skin touch upon most aspects of the human condition. The work is driven by progressive collaboration with others, built on their shared sense of otherness and questioning aspects of all our multiple selves. About the work: Mappa Mundi Inscribed Driven by his desire for aestheticisation, the Il Sarto Immortale project sought to create a new skin for Martin (a friend of the artists). In the tracks of the monks that inscribed man’s relationship with God onto the single sheet of vellum that became the Hereford Mappa Mundi, now 21st century technology is used to “tattoo” the people, towns, rivers, paths, animals, and events of the medieval world onto Martin’s skin. This connects him to a pre-reformation Christianity, which provides the foundation for his life today. During the process of tailoring the new skin for Martin, the tattoo of the Mappa Mundi became a fascinating cloth in its own right. Diane Chappalley’s paintings emerge from sensory experiences; the synthesis and stimulation of new and past perceptions. The work meets in a singular visual language of abstraction. She explores oil paint to create an atmosphere of precariousness, where the collapse of gesture into form is anticipated through the friction of control and slippage. The continual ambiguity in process mirrors a psychological experience – one at flux between harmony and disharmony, structure and fluidity. The paintings are an exploration into the organic nature of the world, made with an impulse of diaristic introspection and intimacy. The outcome is the creation of a world in colour, where forms interact with one another and are animated by the composition they live in. The paintings come from the experiential, where still life is agitated and the familiar is uncertain. In the gap between what is hidden and what is revealed, a loose narrative takes place. About the work: Bloom A flourishing, healthy condition; the state of freshness and vigour. A youthful or healthy glow in a person's complexion. A delicate, powdery surface deposit on certain fresh fruits, leaves, or stems. Or an algal bloom. Corinne Charton lifts images from the margins (and occasionally the centre) of the art historical canon as well as from the glut of moving and still imagery, of the famous and the anonymous. Her practice spans across painting and digital film where she creates deceiving portraits and withholding close-ups that do not partake in a postmodern “emptiness of the image” (Parveen Adams). Rather, an unexpected and disorienting plenitude flows out of these representational shells. Beneath the hollowed out faces lies a motley crew of passions and ideas: the eternal vicissitudes of carnality; love lost and found; the feminist art historical imperative of (re)discovering women artists of the past; that old chestnut, looking and being looked at; the troubled marriage between images and meaning. The un-finished aspects reflect concerns surrounding completion. Erratically in search of a dialogue with painting, Corinne Charton investigates notions surrounding their function as cultural objects and reveals a process where the emphasis is on the application of the paint; what is left behind are traces of brush marks, remnants of thoughts, errors, hesitations and ultimately the triumph over the blank canvas. About the work: No matter how “passive” she may occur to the viewer, although the clouds are slowly thickening behind her, she is not budging, it does not bother her as she calmly stares back at the viewer with her empty eye sockets. Maria Theresia von Paar has been removed from her original “context” however this does not prevent her from sitting comfortably in these new never before occupied spaces, these spaces are based on a single painting or amalgams of. Maria Theresia von Paar painting by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1793 Lorraine Fossi work emerges from the territory of abstraction, in the way that an architect starts with the abstract and works toward the real world. It addresses the residues of International Modernism, while being complicated by material sensitivities, memory, narrative and perceptual ambiguity. The work exists within the context of an interest in diagrams, as well as a way of thinking about art which is created along the logic of a function - the artwork as ‘machine’ for sliding, for measuring, for sex or for surveillance. The realisation of the work comes in experience, as a performance where the real and the imaginary come together. Materials are drawn into the work's assemblage from every sphere of life, and sometimes include ‘found objects’. The artworks are both painting and object but not at the same time - from a far distance they perform in space like sculpture, and from a closer view like painting. In her artworks, painting is a function, switching from different perspectives, with space for the viewer to imagine moving, measuring, stepping back, and also resting. It is an abstract work that contain within it air and openness, solid compressed blocks of memory which somehow sustain an immediate clarity. About the work: Dialogue The pale yellow surface is a support for objects and an arena for dialogue. It is a painting, a shelf and a stage, all at once. The ‘found objects’ are removed from their context of origin and used to create something that is entirely new, inbetween art and life. The surface shows a horizontal line of friction which tells us that the square tool has had a function: ‘to paint’. The artist's activity is barely visible. Time is suspended, somehow stopped by the gaze of the viewer. Block of memory: This work is the superimposition of four surfaces, made of different materials, moods, and modes of actions. The surfaces are not entirely visible - a metaphor for memories partially revealed. The mirror shape mediates between the block and the world as well as reflecting what is before the block: the viewer, the gallery space and our shared memories. Caroline Jane Harris’ practice is concerned with the shift in engagement with her immediate environment, through the accelerating transformation of images in contemporary culture. She uses digital media with analogue processes as a way of both recording and examining anxiety over time and technologies themselves, whilst exploring the material condition of images versus the tactility of 2D space. Traversing printmaking, drawing and photography, Harris examines experiences of time through meditations on past and present moment, put into play with her selection of images and continuity of processes. She is most known for her labor-intensive hand-cutting technique, which exemplifies her desire to slow down and be present, to synchronize drawing with breath and forensically excavate. About the work: The works begin with images Harris captures and collects as a method of understanding Landscape, through actions of recording and examining phenomena in nature. From this point, the forensic processing of the image consciously mimics its content and Harris works to manifest both the physical and non-tangible attributes of the production process, in the final piece. Blind Light is comprised of two photographic images layered and reproduced onto one surface; a digital print depicting a backlit window, veiled by a hand-cut 'bitmap' binary version of shadows on concrete. The real shadows cast by the cut-out-spaces reveal a light-source located in actual space perpendicular to the picture plane, which dispel the illusion of the photographic surface, whilst in-turn highlighting the works' dimensional qualities. Jane Hayes Greenwood paintings juxtapose bodies and food, in playful, painterly compositions, investigating ideas relating to consumption and desire. Her works are veiled with the seductive qualities sometimes related to consumerism, yet they reveal a world of anxious uncertainty. Art history and personal history are interwoven and humour is used as a device to disguise complex and multi-layered meanings. Appropriating from a wide range of sources, the works bring together images culled from different times and places. Elements selected from Early Christian Manuscripts, Ancient Greek ceramics and contemporary visual culture, rub up against each other to generate abundant associations. Hayes Greenwood’s invented compositions hint at narratives, twisting the familiar into something more disturbingly revealing. Combining different painterly techniques, there is a preoccupation with surface and objects, often depicted with a tactile realism. Some areas appear almost computer generated rather than created by hand and the lure of the unblemished surface is seductively screen-like. This is in contrast with areas of impasto paint where the physicality of the material is made discernibly present. Ultimately, works aim to comment on the complexity of human desire in a world of excess. About the work: In the story of Genesis, Eve is cast as a witchy temptress enticing Adam ever closer towards the forbidden fruit. Taking the Garden of Eden as its starting point, Astonishing Pair depicts a sultry blonde sporting two bitten apples of biblical proportions. Both seductive and challenging, this femme fatale questions a seemingly insatiable appetite for the simulation of pleasure and shame. Oliver Hickmet’s work deals with the construction of mediated experience by exploring the invented spaces we move through in our everyday lives and studying the fantasies our minds inhabit around them. Investigating the devices used to construct the identity of locations, asking how they are branded and disseminated as part of the networks they are translated into. Considering what happens in that translation from place to picture, questioning what things appear to be and the situations they occupy. Aiming to decode the condition of places within their networks, exploring how they are mediated via technology and in what way such tools are reconfiguring our own orientation and lived experience. About the work: “The state turned nature into something to be appreciated by the eyes alone.” (Wilson, 1992: 37) The identity of places today is represented by the global content that ceaselessly flows through them; they are branded and disseminated through online sources becoming sweets in the tourist travel shop. Their image is constructed as a destination concept, using icons of leisure and comfort. All immediately available and easily accessible, familiar to every spectator across the globe as they search for their next new experience. These works address the methods used to construct the identity of the landscape, asking how has it been packaged and how is it consumed. The key drive behind Amanda Houchen’s work is a fascination with individuals playing out a role in order to exist in an idealised form. These characters are ephemeral; existing at the time in which they’re recognised by others The focus is on the temporary nature of this state of performance and stardom. In his essay The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord speaks of escaping the mediocrity of the everyday through creating ‘momentary ambiences of life’ and transforming them into a ‘superior passional quality’. Source material for her work includes the more obscure and choreographed settings of burlesque, cabaret or the circus - where people adopt theatrical roles and there’s the element of masquerade. She is interested in exploring the possibilities and limitations of paint - how applying it in particular ways can create a sense of dislocation, calling into question certain fundamental concepts such as space, time and identity. About the work: Hide and Seek is taken from a selection of portraits based on icons from the early part of the twentieth century, such as Marlene Dietrich and Brigitte Helm. Amanda recasts the femme fatale, placing her in a more ambiguous context. She is inspired in particular by Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s silent film ‘Pandora’s Box’, in which the director looks at the potential threat of female sexuality - where the central character Lulu played by Louise Brooks, is compared to the figure of Pandora from Greek mythology, who unleashed disaster and destruction into the world. The central character of each painting both emerges and recedes into a decorative surface, where any formal identity is only ever partially known and the viewer is encouraged to deconstruct the suggested narrative. If the ideals of beauty are then questioned, the sense of empowerment ordinarily inherent in these glamorous images is further subverted through the tension created between the figurative and the abstract. Benedict Hughes practice is concerned with the dichotomy in the categorization of the arts. From what comprises a work of fine art compared to functional or applied arts. In this time of confusion over what exactly ‘art’ is and the blurred line of how to define it, he is interested in the original purposes of art and how the meaning, metaphor and purpose of the artefact has developed from an essential item into an art work. Hughes works with traditional materials as a way of cementing the work in a historical framework. He purposely uses a range of techniques including metalwork, ceramics, printmaking, textiles and stained glass. The process heavy technique of casting, pottery, etching and sewing demands a tacit knowledge and curiosity of the material. By then challenging the preconceptions of craftsmanship the plot of the piece can then float between historical fact, myth and his own identity by using topical imagery to be incorporated into the narrative of the piece that on first appearances appears as an artefact. It is this conjoining of the traditional and the topical that authorises a crafted work to possess subversive political, satirical/social and intimate personal messages. About the work: The work, My Magna Mater Complex, cast in bronze, is based on a Celt helmet that was dredged from the Thames in 1864. The decoration embellished around the surface tells a narrative of modern day London and it relates to the location and place in which it was sacrificed and found, the genius loci, the relevance of the anarchic Celtic culture and the kinship found in the Punk movement and other anti-establishment movements. Sarah Jenkins uses sculpture to consider the effects of technological advancement and consumer alienation. Her work questions Slavoj Zizek’s position that in late capitalism, we must “accept that there are things out there that serve nothing”. Jenkins’ employs the aesthetics of manufacturing and mass production in conjunction with more tactile or sensuous materials, to explore notions of value, waste and consumption. These sculptural compositions question the inherent systems that orientate how we value objects, and problematize the position of the art object within this parameter. Her work also draws on representations of materiality in pop culture, through advertising, science fiction and TV documentaries such as How It’s Made. About the work: Even More Than You Expected is a wax cast of a partially melted TV. The outdated TV is currently denied the value placed on nostalgic or vintage objects, so it comes to occupy the liminal space between old and new. It becomes a symbol of the way in which the value of objects is always in flux, reflected in the melted structure which emphasizes that nothing is solid or fixed. The work takes its name from the slogan of a 1990s advert for a Panasonic TV, which like the product it promotes is now consigned to the past. The advert, which states the TV is ‘sculptured like a work of art’, perfectly encapsulates the irony of advertising rhetoric, in a consumer market in which value is short-lived. Katie Lennard’s work is rendered through photography, performance, objects, moving-images, and the construction of environments. She is drawn to compose images within ‘periphery spaces’ where there is a sense of transient activity and the potential for drama; for example, basements, garages, carparks as well as natural, wild spaces. Lennard conditions a strange and mysterious culture using appropriated materials, for example: a Chinese kimono, metal springs, plastic building sacks, a telephone cord, a Dom Perignon bottle from the year 2000 she’s filled with concrete. Through re-contextualising and modifying ‘found’ objects, she narrates different realities and fashion cycles made visible through consumer fetishisms and a throwaway culture. The fluidity of human perceptions provokes her to express a timeless arena; an uncanniness that echoes some distant and familiar displacement as well as a vital hope for creativity of future generation. About the work: Destroyed Room (After Jeff Wall): This work is named after Jeff Walls 1978 photograph, Destroyed Room (a transcription of a Delacroix painting, 1827). This photograph documents a spontaneous and precise transformation from artistic block to inspired frenzy. The tripod was balanced precariously on a mezzanine inside my garage. I had to climb up a ladder and press the button and dive into the piles of objects that I had been making and collecting for years. Performing this stunt, I found my ‘self’ like a mannequin as well as a tool for expression and social commentary. The work also echoes the house in the Wizard of Oz that collapses onto the witch. A collapse that was at the beginning of Dorothy’s story and at the end of some other lesser known character. Contact: This image taken on a self-timer speaks for itself. It has no grounding within a specific environment or time. I can only say that I knew, or felt very strongly in the moment that something intimate and special had been captured. It felt like the photograph had been taken from another universe where my body was all of a sudden in contact. Emmanuelle Loiselle’s work is deeply concerned with aspects of domesticity, woman interiors and motherhood. Her multi-disciplinary practice - installations, paintings, printmaking - demonstrates the brutality of motherhood and draw parallels between her studio activity and her life at home. Napkins, rags, tea towels and table clothes she glues, attaches, sews or simply hangs have transformed into symbols of liberation on the canvas. The dirt in the kitchen or the paint in the studio converts into one single visual element. The binary routine of ‘make beautiful/clean and transform the ugliness’ is what is left on the canvas. Contradictory concepts of chaos versus order, vibrant acidic colors versus dirty colors, participate to the humorous vision between the good and the bad woman she tries to communicate. Muscular gestures on the canvas – often associated with male abstraction – are twisted into ‘anti macho marks’. These painterly energetic brushstrokes become symbols for rebellion and poking ‘fun’ in abstract expressionism. The incorporation of objects into paintings and installations is an attempt to incorporate her everyday and expand her paintings further into three-dimensional objects. About the work: Cloth Dryer is the depiction of an object that is being overlooked; constantly part of my life, standing in my living room, whose existence is the persistent reminder of my daily motherhood ‘duties’. Taking the whole space of the canvas, it stands like a monstrous frightening animal about to wake up. The clothes hang, wet and heavy, one has fallen on the floor. Acidic colors and brutal black marks participate to an expressionist dynamic to emphasize the monumentality of the piece. Bonne Maman is a playful yet critical vision of my domestic environment merged with my painter’s life questioning what a good or bad mother can be. Filthy fridge open, oven closed but paint on, rags on the floor, paint everywhere, the piece interrogates the viewer about what is expected of women to be or to do in a conservative polite society. Alice McVicker During a recent residency in Madrid, the artist was fascinated by the way Velasquez found abstraction from within figuration. Indeed many of the late 18th Century paintings in the collection contained much abstraction from within figuration. McVicker has explored how painting can replicate marks made with pencil with a brush, and how these marks can be expanded with different oil based mediums. Initial ideas of painting as performance were associated with recollections of Piccasso’s ballet and set designs, as well as those connected with the Bauhaus. The artist subsequently considered the painting Landscape Cappriccio after Xilitla (2016) to be a stage set on which other abstract and figurative elements could perform. The painting was to act as a stage on which fantasy characterised by abstract marks can play out across the canvas: a performance within a performance within a performance. About the work: The painting dismantles Edward James’ surreal garden of Las Pozas, liberating and integrating forms into a new vision that breaks open a familiar structure of what seems at first a mansion for re-examination. Taking the sculptures from their voluptuous environment and transferring them into flat cut outs all layered on top of each other, it introduces a dark surreal world, a cinematic vision of a half real half imagined dark building which looms over a flattened and disrupted barren landscape. Indulging in Capriccio with a contemporary twist, this painting introduces a merging of ruins, sculptures, buildings, foliage and brush marks. Amanda Moström creates living and playful works that engage the public, using a visual language of domestic objects, play and the profane. The works encourage interaction and can be used informally. She wants to overcome the reluctance for people to intimately interact with an object just because it is an artwork set in a gallery. Moström mainly works with bronze and will often pause a piece at a particular step in the making process, leaving a trace of the maker, pieces thus retain the strength and resistance of their materials, and crucially reflect the joy of the making process. Her most recent series is named Welcome to the Common Ground and relates to the public house, an environment that is welcoming and comfortable to a wide audience. Here, she monumentalizes casual moments and ephemeral objects using classical materials as a record of an experience that would seldom be documented or remembered. Moström wants to encourage a sense of experimentation and play in the space, so that relationships with individual works are built on interactions and physical touch. She wishes that this active participation with the work allows a more profound experience; involving play, touch and communal participation. About the work: The materials in this piece are important, to use pure materials such as oak, gold, steel, glass and bronze she stresses the usage and the currency and activity that this work monumentalize- a place important to the artist. Moström harvested chewed gums from underneath pub tables, collecting old and new contributions of mark makings that had been left in public houses. The cast bronze chewed gums are placed underneath the shelf, to mimic a pub table or chair where chewed gums are covertly dispatched. Each laborious process and material that she encountered was also important, as communities and common places highlights the diverse nature behind each single individual that creates the community, how the adding of each complex and individual personality creates a strong and rich environment. Graham Murtough’s main subject in his work is ‘Modern Dissonance’. He uses this term to describe the tension that is experienced when various desires, forces, and social restrictions are at odds – creating a discordant emotional state. In order to explore this tension, he employs a variety of techniques, sometimes making references to architecture, the physical gesture and the body. These references may be used to conjure associations with civic buildings or failing ideals of modernism, such as the fall of utopia. These references help create an aesthetic of ruin where the original function of a structure is intentionally obscured; creating a mystery object that is open to various interpretations. Coordinating material relationships within a small-scale event is another method he uses to explore dissonance. He allows the inherent qualities of a material to have a presence of their own while enabling them to have an effect on another. At times, he manipulates them to appear as something they are not, and the interplay between these two possibilities particularly interesting. Taking inspiration from fugitive plants in the urban environment, he uses plants within his work as a symbol of regeneration. Combining these methods, he seeks to create an affective aftermath and the sense that an event has just taken place. About the work: The Relative Value of Convention refers to the implicit violence of our accepted cultural values and unquestioned social norms. The ever-obsessive drive towards new urban development and expansion is an example of this violence. As we face environmental catastrophe, the two are completely at odds, and the dissonance is observably remarkable. Some of the visual language of the construction site is used to refer to this stark absurdity. In this work, the artist seeks to represent the pressure and tension of our daily lives that is interrupted by an event or the fall of an ideal and superseded by the sense of optimism and exuberance that is present in a new circumstance. Louise Pallister’s practice encompasses aspects of drawing, printmaking and film to bear witness to elusive, extinct or endangered species. Natural history and philosophy inform the direction of her work but drawing is her fundamental means of information gathering and understanding. Using the positive act of mark making she documents the fragile tension between actuality and absence, the ambiguous and insubstantial nature of ‘fact’ and of mark making. This revision and evolution of work is an undertaking with no expected outcome, rather a series of open-ended questions by which Pallister tests the boundaries of her practice. As such her work may be viewed as extended field notes; a personal record of explorations in both nature and art. About the work: Martha is part of a body of work concerning the passenger pigeon, a native of North America and once the world’s most populous bird before habitat loss and hunting drove it to extinction in the early 20th century. Martha was the last of her species, dying a captive in Chicago Zoo in 1914. The soft and scratchy lines of the bird’s portrait imply a tenuous presence contained within a grid of lines that invoke not only the cage but the means of transcribing an image whether through ‘gridding up’ in drawing or the methods of early photographer Eadweard Muybridge. John Richert’s works sums up the artifice of contemporary art, of consumption and desire in an endless loop around re-negotiation of design and art, presentation and display, Richert’s drawings accurately reproduce the materiality and irresistible allure of contemporary fine art -becoming immaculate objects of desire in themselves. About the work: SANATORIUM RAUCH & SPIEGEL ® Let us suppose that due to unforeseen events, your access to financial markets is abruptly curtailed and as a consequence, your material resources are severely depleted. It is in just such a tight spot that inexpensive, long- abandoned methods of artistic and cultural production may be revisited. Lowly, humble, labour-intensive techniques - eschewed during periods of abundance and prosperity – soon return, welcomed back into the fold without protest. They can bolster faltering morale and allow creative output to continue uninterrupted, albeit in straitened circumstances. It is evident that endlessly long hours, monotonous repetition and trance-like working practices can function as a sustainable methodology whilst also providing an intellectual bulwark against any ill- advised search for meaning. Diane Rogan’s work focuses on space that exists at the periphery of our vision, and the social politics and states of mind that this represents. As compositions of familiar surroundings, they resonate as a collective memory and, as both real and imagined spaces, Rogan identifies a way of seeing urban landscapes that becomes both an active and creative process. Rogan has called this experience ‘Wild Space’. Through Wild Space, she reveals how the construction and development of our urban landscape marginalises areas of society. Strong lines, blurred boundaries, multi-perspectives and seemingly discordant elements, combine with an unnatural yet poetic palette, as detailed observations are overlaid with unbroken washes of bright colour. The heavy flax canvases are constructed by Rogan in a labour-intensive process of priming and sanding, before being intentionally broken up using found materials from the sites of her subject matter. These are the thumbprints of a real place, abstracted into a new form. Rogan’s works represent the process of Wild Space. Fluid brushstrokes and fractured surfaces meld reality with shifting layers of memory and imagination, converging to explore the connection and interaction between people and place. About the work: Heterotopia 2 presents a hidden social space that is a composition of different features of a contemporary, urban landscape – the familiarity of which clearly resonates in our collective consciousness. In this process of recognition, Rogan offers us the opportunity to actively – as well as creatively – be aware as we experience our urban environment, and to focus on the spaces that are placed at the edge of our attention. Heterotopia 2 represents a microcosm of overlooked and unclaimed public space. It is a shifting surface that layers the real, remembered and imagined. Time flows across its structure; original architecture cracks – pulled into different perspectives, brick and concrete dissolves in colour, and tufts of nature fracture its surface. Formed of bright, hard light, blurred and strong shadow, the unnatural palette of Heterotopia 2 points not only to different times of day seen simultaneously, but also to the play of memory and imagination. Wild Space I is named after the central concept that forms the focus of Rogan's work. This is an active way of seeing our urban landscape, and a process she calls Wild Space. Rogan looks at spaces that are situated at the periphery of our vision, and invites us to identify the slippage between the socio-political and psychological implications of that placement, and its design. Wild Space I present a place and a process – exploring the tension between the two. Wild Space I creates a heat – like tarmac in the sun, and presents a visual language built to resonate with our universal experience and memory of urban landscapes. Celia Scott’s work is informed by architectural discourse; she studied and practiced architecture before turning to painting. Her work explores the language of International Modernism, material sensitivities, memory and perceptual ambiguity, and uses concepts from architecture such as perspective and the upturned view. Scott questions the nature of space by depicting three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface in strange and unexpected ways. She uses the industrial materials of early modern architecture, such as ply, aluminum and spray paint along with processes of drawing, painting, spraying, sanding and carving with a router to achieve a language of forms which leaves missing links for the viewer’s eye to fill in. The forms in her work refer to assemblages and architectural spaces, whilst interior space also plays a role. Her work involves a perceptual play between the presentation of illusionistic space and the objecthood of the panel, sometimes introducing relief by carving the surface, thereby increasing the actuality of the work. Scale is important; larger works are the height of a door and allow the viewer to metaphorically enter the space of the work. About the work: Past Imperfect is made using modernist materials; birch ply mounted on an aluminum frame. The motif derives from one of Scott’s assemblages and the table frame drawn on the surface of the ply to be within the space of the viewer. Slightly distorted perspective and the upturned view are devices used to enable the eye to oscillate between the imperfections of the surface of the ply and the space within the painting. Flora Scrymgeour takes hundreds of photographs of London streets in order to readdress her experience of urban life. Working from these snapshots, she paints momentary sensory responses to specific movements, colours, and forces, before any verbal associations can skew her visceral perceptions. She works with a variety of tools on vibrant grounds, arriving at gestural effects dictated by her body’s instinctive reaction to colour, speed, and sound. Her paintings aim for an alternative to literal vision: seeking to depict not just a landscape, but the contours of a personal, momentary and instinctive interpretation of that landscape. Flora recognises the potential for musicality in the interplay of lines and marks hovering over a bright monotone; a collision of consonance and dissonance, evocative of improvised jazz riffs. She hopes to locate and capture such musicality within apparently everyday urban scenes. About the work: Kennington 12 is one of an extended series of paintings that record the artist’s instinctive responses to movements and forces within London street scenes. This painting shows divergent marks at play, clashing over a uniform brightly coloured surface. It depicts a tension between chaos and precision, and a confrontation between the fleeting and the continuous. The result is concerned not so much with the visual representation of the street as with the process of seeking its visceral impact in paint. Antonia Showering. Paint has the ability to make sense of this equivocal world. It can solidify a fleeting moment, but with more sentiment than a photograph. By aiming to capture the essence of something, rather than the precise form, Antonia believes she is given entrance to a non-literal world. Here, brush marks can mimic how (she considers) the memory works. Her grounds always begin with abstract marks which have lyrical patterns constructed in unprompted colours. From this, Antonia picks elements of figuration and makes them tangible. Subconsciously nostalgic objects, people and places appear. She paints to capture something that words cannot; an ephemeral emotion which would flee if explained verbally. She wants to capture the fluidity of memory, and show how one moment is never disparate from the next. By layering paint, rubbing back with turpentine and then building up more thin layers Antonia’s works contain history. Similar to how a story is told, some parts are exaggerated, others are loosely drawn in and some totally forgotten (where the ground is left exposed). About the work: Fam-a-lee began as an abstract painting, which was investigating a variety of marks, forms and colour relationships. Then the figures slowly began to populate the psychological space. The event was loosely based on a recent experience, but one unexpected figure emerged whilst the painting was developing. Subconsciously Antonia’s Chinese grandfather had been painted, and crept into the composition. This ties in with her desire to capture the mysterious way our memory and imagination works, and how the paintbrush can be a tool into understanding this. Odilia Martinez Suanze’s work is an exploration of the sublime of experiences of landscapes and the sense of these experiences is what she tries to understand and explore through painting. Odilia deals with the exploration of materials and the fluid possibilities held within their substance to set, and in some way mirror the inner phenomenological experiences of these visits. Using thin and fluid paint in layers of semi-transparent washes, forming characteristic fragile organic shapes, creating depth and volume in the abstract images. Her works are related to her mind and the activities and cognitive processes that happen when she paints both consciously and unconsciously; emotions, perceptions, memory, reasoning, learning, creativity, imagination and desires. She tries to create a connection between neurology, phenomenology and the sublime. About the work: This piece was made with natural pigments from rocks that the artist collected in natural environments that she had visited. She ground the rocks to make her own painting material. The process of making the painting materials is very important for the artist to go back to the visited landscapes and the experiences she had in them. Dina Varpahovsky’s challenging, tragi-comic work is informed by the current rise of narcissism associated with the compulsive sharing and posting on social media. She is particularly focused on painting women and young girls, questioning the way we continue to represent girlhood as sweet, pretty and pink, perversely domesticating yet sexualizing girls from a very early age. Varpahovsky’s paintings deliberately problematize the images that are circulated on social media, often serving to project idealized versions of ourselves. Underneath the digitally enhanced versions of family lives, cruelty, competitiveness and power structures are played out. American grins of toothless girls posing in a simulated sexual way move from cute to uncanny. Future ‘mean girls’, vampiric adults-in -waiting, blow kisses that challenge the viewer to question whether they are directing or being directed. Varpahovsky empathizes with this desperate posturing, indicating that good and evil lies within us all. Today we are living in a culture where the daily interaction with a multitude of visual messages is inescapable yet the full extent of social media’s influence on our lives is still unknown. The darker, more disturbing aspects of Varpahovsky's work throw into sharp focus the dangers of losing lived experiences to the world of appearances. About the work: Ambergris is inspired by a holiday photo posted on social media. The little girl’s sophisticated, sexy, yet childishly awkward, ‘bikini’ pose seemed more suited to a celebrity gossip magazine or a fashion shoot. Ambergris questions the way we continue to represent girlhood as sweet, pretty and pink, perversely domesticating yet sexualizing girls from a very early age. Fiona Wallace instinctively invokes an ethic of social interaction and storytelling in her work. This is often part of a socially engaged process, valuing reference to feminism and gender; colonisation and canons of meaning; what it is to be homesick and culturally excluded; what it is to have to step outside of yourself and occupy another ground. She is drawn to the re-creation of subjective truths; the blurring of messy histories. An archive of research notes, family stories and photographs, becomes a reservoir and metaphor of memory and emotion. The voices evoked within her work are habitually silent, misunderstood or aspersed. The installation of these prints aimed to evoke this togetherness and collective emotion. It aims to take the language of prejudice and sexism, infiltrate its ''business-as-usual' facade - and make it her own. This form allowed a collective voice enterprise, which lifts the series of prints into a different engagement for the viewer. The result explores liminality, humour, reflection and the fading in and out of experiences. After a first degree in psychology and philosophy, Fiona Wallace practiced as mental health specialist, and as a children and families social worker and Children's Guardian. She arrived late to the practice of fine art: sideways but with an open mind About the work: These two prints are part of a larger work of 26 life-size monotype prints of women and an accompanying art book -titled 'An ABC for MISOGYNISTS'. These prints are the letters G and Y from the ABC. The work was a process of examining gendered words/phrases, which I collected from a range of sources, including women I know. The alphabet began to form from some of their responses - derogatory, patronising, descriptive or memorable words that have been said to them directly. Whilst objectively there is little about being female that binds them together into a unified category, women can have an affinity with each other through their shared experience of otherness, difference and specificity. The original gallery install allowed this collective endeavor to emerge as the women circled around and above the viewer’s eye line. The art book (available to view on line by request ([email protected]), has an accompanying limited edition of 50 hand bound copies which are for sale. Fouzia Zafar’s figureless interiors and looming objects create a nostalgic ghostly atmosphere and point to traces of humanity. Her work explores the themes of memory, family histories, migration and absence. Play is a key concept for her. Play encompasses repeatedly finding, composing and constructing new tools and processes to explore objects’ history, surfaces, and qualities, whilst also constructing new narratives. Often, play begins with acquiring other people’s discarded domestic objects. Staging objects, photographing them and constructing collages are all intermediate stages. Each stage invites the element of chance to enter the practice but also provides the opportunity to both push each medium, but also embrace what it offers. The resulting work flickers between reality and fiction and use of pictorial language and processes. About the work: At Play explores the artists’ personal history through the ‘family album,’ and the relationship we have to history through memory. After the excavation of particular personal histories both physically and mentally by recreating collaged fictional interiors, with defunct objects, the sediment settles and new memories are born of a new time and place. In this print, there is a play at the threshold of interior and exterior, textile, craft and print. The employment of collage and embracement of the element of chance into the practice allow a hybrid image to develop, which encourages play for both artist and viewer. BIOGRAPHIES: Jonathan Armour recently graduated from City and Guilds of London Art School with an MA Fine Art. 2016 saw participation in exhibitions from Madrid during ARCO in February, to “Money and Power” at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London in October, plus “Indelible” and “Uncertain States” in November in London. This year is shaping up with the film “Infinite Surface” being screened in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney during January to March, plus two exhibitions of cross-media work in London in June/July and November. Diane Chappalley (b.1991, Switzerland). In 2012, she moved to London to accomplish her BA at City and Guilds of London Art School. As a result of her degree show, she was awarded the Chadwyck-Healey Prize for Painting. In 2016, she was selected for the Marmite prize for painting; an exhibition that toured to the Highlanes Gallery in Ireland and Block 336 in London. Currently she is finishing her Masters Study at the Slade School of Fine Art within the painting department. Corinne Charton, born in Paris and raised in Sweden, Charton pursued her interest in art following a career as a fashion model. She graduated from Central Saint Martins with BA (Hons) Fine Art in 2003 and went on to complete her MA in Fine Art at Middlesex University in 2106 graduating with Distinction. She has held two solo shows, The Muse at 269, London (2004) and Twin Obsession, StART SPACE, London (2006). Selected group exhibitions include; Vision at The NUNNERY - Bow arts, Heap of Language, Gasworks, London and Oriel Davies Open, all in 2016, as well as The Muse at 269, London (2004), Central St Martins, London & Recent Graduates, The Affordable Art Fair, London, (2003), Unmarked, Rossi Gallery, London (2001) and Canon Now Vision, V&A, London (1999). Her work is in public and private collections, including Central St Martins, University of the Arts London. Lorraine Fossi was born in Paris into a family of artists and architects. She studied architecture at The Beaux-Arts and graduated with an MA in Fine Arts from City & Guilds of London Art School. She won the City & Guilds School Art Prize. Since her graduation in September 2015 she won the first open call by Turps Gallery for a show in December 2015, Charrette with Celia Scott. Her recent exhibitions include Young Gods simultaneously at Charlie Smith and The Griffin Gallery and 30 Celsius at ASC Gallery. Lorraine is a Director at Pipeline Projects, a collaborative of artists, curators and a writer newly based in a former boat warehouse in Putney.In December 2016 she participated in the opening of Pipeline to the public with a sculptural installation ‘Do Not Cross the Line’, made within and for the space. Caroline Jane Harris received a BA (Hons) Fine Art Printmaking from the University of Brighton 2009. In 2015 Harris received MA (Distinction) from City & Guilds of London Art School, where she received the Roger de Grey Drawing Prize and the Norman Ackroyd Prize for Etching. Since undergraduate studies her work has been exhibited in USA, Korea, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, India, Turkey, and Switzerland and UK-wide, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2016. Solo exhibitions include ‘Anatomy of the Arboreal’ (2014), Scream Gallery, London. Recent exhibitions include ‘EVERYTHING EXISTS NOW’, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery; ‘Perfectionism (part III): The Alchemy of Making’ Griffin Gallery; SELECT/16, Photofusion. Harris has been featured in numerous print publications including Art Maze Magazine, Red Magazine Arts Issue, ‘Paper Play’, Gingko Press and Vogue Brazil. Currently she is Artist in Residence at the Florence Trust London and Research Printmaking Fellow at City & Guilds of London Art School. Jane Hayes Greenwood graduated from MA Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School in 2015. She was selected for the XL Catlin Art Prize in 2016 and has had recent national and international exhibitions. Alongside her practice, Hayes Greenwood is the Director of Block 336, a UK registered charity, artist-led project space, studio provider and independent publisher in London. The organisation aims to promote engagement and critical discussion of contemporary art, with an emphasis on collaboration and cross-practice dialogue. Oliver Hickmet (b.1992), he received a First-Class BA in Fine Art from City and Guilds of London Art School (2014), nominated for the Catlin Prize (2015) and listed by Dazed and Confused as one of the UK’s 40 most promising artists (2015). Recent exhibitions include Disappearing is a Trick, Novo Mesto, Slovenia (2016), Hummm, Hilbert Raum, Berlin (2016) and For You! I Would Do Anything, Tritongatan5, Sweden (2015). He lives and works in London. Amanda Houchen completed her MA in Fine Art: Painting at the City and Guilds of London Art School in 2014. Houchen's work is held in various private collections in Europe. She has been shortlisted for: Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2015), the John Moores Painting Prize (2012) and preselected for the Threadneedle Prize (2015 and 2013). Exhibitions include: Beneath the Canopy, Aldeburgh Beach Lookout Residency, Caroline Wiseman Modern and Contemporary, Suffolk (2016), Pandora's Box, Unit G Gallery, London (2016), The Unsung Muse, Peter Pears Gallery, Aldeburgh, Suffolk (2016), Make Me Believe, Serena Morton Gallery, London (2016), Dschungel, Window Space, ASC Gallery, London (2015), The Expressive Collective, Camden Image Gallery, London (2014) and New Artist Fair, Candid Art Galleries, London (2012). Benedict Hughes graduated with an MA from City and Guilds of London Art school in 2016. Prior to graduating Hughes has exhibited regularly including a solo show at the Empire gallery and has won commissions to make monumental work for companies including Guinness, Honda and Wieden+Kennedy. Sarah Jenkins (b. 1993, South Wales) graduated from Goldsmiths College, University of London where she studied Fine Art & History of Art in 2016. She was recently selected for Solopreneur, an exhibition of works chosen from degree shows across the UK, at Kingsgate Project Space. She currently holds the position of Junior Fellow at Goldsmiths, working for the Art Department alongside expanding her practice. Katie Lennard (b.1994, London) graduated from City and Guilds of London Art School. She was awarded the Sculpture prize for her degree show production as well as the Merlin Entertainments Group prize for materials. Lennard has curated group exhibitions at venues such as, The Ragged School Museum and the Londonewcastle project space in Shoreditch. She has participated on various artist residencies, notably a wilderness residency with the activist organisation, Signal Fire based in Oregon and Washington States (2014). Since graduating in June 2016 she has been invited by artist group ‘Pipeline Projects’ to participate on a residency in the derelict basement of Roger Waters Music Ltd offices in Putney. Here, she will be creating an exhibition in March 2017. Emmanuelle Loiselle is a French artist who graduated from City and Guilds London School of Art in 2016. She lives and works in London where she has had several group exhibitions: Paper at the Genesis Gallery (2016), the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair (2016) and the Ragged School Museum (2015) among others. She was selected for the Clyde and Co Art Award. She won the Chadwyck-Healey Prize for Painting, and the Artichoke Prize for Printmaking (2016). Her work is held in several private collections. Alice McVicker is a graduate of City and Guilds of London Art School (2015) and West Dean College (2016). McVicker was selected for the Clyde and Co Art Award in June 2015 and was selected as one of the Mall Galleries FBA Futures in January 2016. McVicker was recently awarded the Richard Ford Award, established in 1976 and supported by the Royal Academy. The award provides artists with the opportunity to spend a month studying the paintings at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid. She has exhibited nationally across the UK, and her work is held in various private collections. McVicker is currently Artist in Residence at Woldingham School. Amanda Moström (b.1991 Sweden) studied for a BA in Fine Art Sculpture at City and Guilds of London Art School (2013-2016), receiving a 1st. During this time she won several travel prizes, and was able to go on a research trip to Oaxaca in Mexico. On graduating she was awarded the Merlin Entertainments’ Group Madame Tussauds’ Merit Award for a Graduating Student, and an Acme Warton House Graduate Studio Award.In 2016 she took part in the Art16 Fair representing City and Guilds of London Art School; and she is currently looking forward to her first solo show, which will be with Castor Projects in 2017. Graham Murtough (b. 1975) recently graduated from the MA program at City and Guilds of London Art School where he won the Outstanding Exhibition award for The Relative Value of Convention II. He earned his BA in Fine Art from the College of Santa Fe, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is currently applying for residencies abroad and beginning research for a new body of work.