Frozen (2020) The Disney juggernaut has long held a contested place within Western consumer culture, serving on the one hand as a promulgator of mainstream liberal ideologies and on the other as a force that both appropriates and flattens the cultural artefacts it consumes. As such, both in its tropes and also in its cultural…
Category: abstract
And the Wolf (2019, watercolour on paper)
This brooding work steps away from her recent Abstract Expressionist themes to explore her feminist influences. Williams situates herself here not just in an artistic tradition but explicitly within a female one, in the work’s clear allusion both to the spare yet energetic, fraying lines and the passionate social engagement of Nancy Spero, but also…
I Contain Multitudes (2019, watercolour on paper)
This striking watercolour sees the artist engaging with contemporary ‘splatter’ painters such as Matthew Munsey, as well as a bold monochromatic tone in deepest Prussian blue. The dramatic effect created by folding the two ‘splattered’ halves of the work together, mirroring the painted areas over one another, creates a dramatic effect reminiscent of insect shapes,…
Archetypes 5: It’s A Hard Rain Gonna Fall (2019, tempura on canvas)
This brooding addition to the Archetypes series departs from the light-filled watercolour technique of earlier painting, employing layers of intensely coloured tempura on canvas to convey an apocalyptic atmosphere that draws from end of the world scenarios as diverse as Bob Dylan’s metaphor-strewn landscapes and today’s Extinction Rebellion youth climate change protests as well as…
London III: Regent’s Park
This gritty addition to the London diptych blends collage with pen-and-ink to capture the multiple layers of energy, grandeur, glamour and squalor overlaying this iconic London park. The pale form of an elephant looms in the background, as if waiting patiently for – for what? Liberation from a zoo enclosure? Clean air to breathe? Meanwhile,…
Swiss Garden 1-5 (2018, mixed media on paper)
Swiss Garden 1 Named for a garden created in the Victorian era by the 3rd Baron Ongley at Old Warden in Bedfordshire, this lapidary series of mixed media miniatures evokes the deep green foliage, bright splashed of blossom and carefully-crafted little vistas typical of the eponymous garden. Swiss Garden 2 Deep greens, cobalt blues and…
London I & II (2018, mixed media)
London I: Soho Square London II: Primrose Hill This mixed media diptych represents a departure from more lyrical and myth-inspired recent work. The unsettling red, black and pink palette suggests a city a long way from peaceful, while the scribbled-over flower motifs and lonely dabs of green struggling to be seen in Soho Square speak…
Sonnet 65 (2018, performance)
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea But sad mortality o’er-sways their power How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days, When rocks impregnable are not…
[VISITING ARTIST] In The Beginning (2018, pencil on paper)
London artist Ben King’s longstanding interest in the ephemeral is captured here in the light application of line and colour, reminiscent of reflected light through stained glass: visible yet intangible, present yet fleeting, poetic and lyrical yet without substance. By restricting his use of colour to the three primaries he imbues his drawing with refreshing…
[VISITING ARTIST] Piazza Comunale (2018, performance)
Anglo-Italian artist Olivia Passalenti developed this performance as part of the Grottamare summer residency programme. Inspired by the bustling, chaotic public life of a classical Italian piazza, the work explores the capacity of architecture to structure, constrain and still be overspilled by the always already excessive energy of human social interaction. During the performance the…
Like It Was Done By A Toddler 
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