Stevie Deas
Stevie Deas was born in Scotland in 1962, he came to art education as a mature student, completeing both his BA and MA at Manchester Metropolitan University by 1999, Deas showed in Manchester and abroad before being awarded a 4 year residency in a work/live unit at ACME’s Fire Station in 2001.
Deas has long standing interests in psychology, sociology, economics and politics; subjects which inform his work. Using a wide variety of different media to produce everything from drawing and painting to film, photography, performance and complex installation work, Deas explores reactions and interactions between individuals and groups; the micro and the macro of human life.
The Journey
"As a severe dyslexic I am completely unable to read maps and these drawings reflect my experience of maps as confusing, tangled, and messy. Journeying from England to Scotland and back again has particular resonance for me and these drawings explore the trip in a conceptual, abstract way. To make these ‘maps’ I put the pen to the paper and try not to control what happens, allowing the it to just record the journey. I’ve recorded my travels in this way for many years now in different parts of the world and describing the twists, turns and bumps of the road has, in some ways, come to symbolise my own life journey".
Thoughts on Nationhood & Identity
"As a Scot who has now lived in England as long as I did in Scotland I've often thought about nationhood and identity and so, despite not coming to any hard and fast conclusions I’ve decided to work with these ideas for BORDERLINE. During 2006, I was struck by the nationalistic energy surrounding the world cup, hence my decision to photograph the national flag masks in a London joke shop window. The political climate in 2007 along with the 300th anniversary of the union of Scotland and England engenders a sense of urgency around the concept of nationhood hence my decision to explore the shifting nature of identity and the meaning of patriotism in this work".
back to top of page
|
The Journey
Thoughts on Nationhood & Identity
|
|
Gary Ferguson
Gary Ferguson is an Edinburgh-based painter. His art training was at Edinburgh College of Art in the 1980s and he trained in graphic and digital design at Edinburgh's Telford college from 1999 - 2001. He works as a designer and as an artist, and the two disciplines inform and affect each other through a cross fertilisation of techniques, approaches and processes. His artwork is about visual language, about how to make significant images that communicate with and engage the viewer in a world experiencing a glut of images. People now have access to infinite amounts of images via the internet and publishing, and can easily create and distribute their own.
But what makes an image have wider value and resonance? Gary Ferguson's painting process is a response to this question, view further images here.
"My paintings are balanced to both provoke a reaction in the viewer, and to allow individual responses and interpretations. We are all compelled to read a narrative into images, to understand and make sense of what we are seeing. In my work I suggest and imply, I leave clues and create impressions, but what story emerges is dependent on the individual and what they bring to what they see. I work with images from many sources. I use found images, for example, from magazines, old books, manuals. I use, edit and extract from my own photos, often searching for 'redundant' background details that could have a new life of their own.
I treat my source materials like objects in a still life - exploring their individual qualities and exploiting the relationships I set up between them. I look to select, edit and compile the images in a way which creates a new context for them, indicating possble scenarios or stories. I select techniques to contribute to how the work is perceived: cropping and arranging of images and panels; paint handling and colour themes; clarity or obscuring of elements"
back to top of page
|
Marq P Kearey
Marq Kearey has walked around London a lot. As he ambles, he takes photos of fly posters, then copies them, meticulously, with gouache paint, alone in his Brixton studio. Once he has painted a stack of varied images from the walls of London's finest streets, he assembles his produce onto specifically cut sheets of board, adjusting & cropping until he reaches his goal; a tribute to Van Gogh & Gauguin in one work, a sun set over Peckham in another. Marq has shown his work internationally over recent years & often in London
"This new work is a reaction to the emotional unrest born from superstitious nonsense that keeps people that live on different islands, share adjacent sides of a mountain or simply walk on facing banks of a river, apart.
I heard a Polish joke recently, which referred to its own identity within the context of two others, German and Russian. It was interesting in that though there were national stereotypes that typified and teased the two countries, it was the Polish character in the story that the punch line was aimed at, and so the protagonist was the butt of his own joke. These paintings, doucument the kind of jokes that say something about national identity,a series of abstractly shaped paintings, each one referring to a cultural background and delivering a response to its own assumed identity".
back to top of page |
|
|
J & M Grant
J & M Grant have worked as a collaborative partnership for the last six years,
developing a series of prints based around new technology combined with traditional print practice.
"A series of stimulating oppositions run throughout these print works. based on the children's Ladybird books but soon developed into a much wider political arena dealing with so called "adult" issues and oppositions, the natural and the unnatural; the present and the past; the scenarios of war and peace; the authentic and the fictitious".
back to top of page
|
Pete Mountford
Pete Mountford has been practising for 10 years. Educated at DJCA, (Dundee BA, 1992) and at Montclair State University, NJ, USA (MA, 1995). Exhibitions include ' Showcase' City Without Walls' Newark, NJ, USA (1994), ‘259 & Drawn'-Stables Gallery, London (2002)) 'The Prosperous Reapers' Alma Gallery London (2005) ’42’ The 3 Colts Gallery,London. and 'Never be Seen' at The Baxter Gallery, Kingston (both 2006).
). Originally a ceramicist, these days his work encompasses Painting, drawing, digital imagery and other mixed media. His approach utilises sequence and correlation in relation to existing systems; such as the cycles of nature and numbers, energy waves and colour therapy bottles. Mountford's work often involves dialogues between individual works or from modules within multi-component works.
More recently he has been utilising landscape –in it’s broadest sense - and maps as subject matters and systems, to explore a narrative that nudges the borders of abstraction and experiments with the correlation of time, looking, experiencing and relating to space and time.
"After a gap of a decade, I recently returned to utilising maps with ‘Martvilli, Georgia’ created for ‘42’ . That work depicted the place in the world that is 42.42 N by 42.42 E. For' Border Line' I Decided logically (or is that illogically? ) to embark on the epic ‘A squared & reconfigured world’ which contains 396 6”X4” panels in 4 sections (and one 10”X8” canvas in the centre). Documented are the locations 0-99 (1.1 X1.1, 2.2X2.2 etc) in the four different directions from the Equator/Meridian axis of O. Aside from maps, these – mainly - inhospitable and inhabitable areas are represented by different shades of blue (to represent the sea) and a range of underpinning rules that are in keeping with ongoing use of the relationship between system and chance".
See support material for more information on A squared & reconfigured world (downloadable pdf) back to top of page |
‘A squared & reconfigured world’ (sections from and digital mock up)
|
|
Liz Webster
Liz Webster was found under a bush in Calderwood, East Kilbride. She used to be a lawyer but is now fully recovered. She graduated with a Fine Art Degree in Tapestry and a bit of a hangover from Edinburgh College of Art in 2006. She comments in relation to her work “It’s a fair cop. You’ve got me bang to rights guv’nor. Oh no, not the face, not the face.” Webster’s work is 100% fat free, delicious tasting, carefully prepared by hand and contains no additives whatsoever. Enjoy.
back to top of page
|
Sarah Sparkes
Sarah Sparkes is a BA graduate of Kingston University and gained an MA at Chelsea School of art and design. She is an artist and curator and has recieved critical acclaim in both these fields. Recent exhibitions have included; 'For Peel' at No More Grey, 'Winter Show' at Contempoary Art Project,'’42’ at The 3 Colts Gallery, 'Never be Seen' at The Baxter Gallery, Kingston and 'Local' at The Wine Gallery. She has been the recepient of numerous residencies and Scholarships, including; 'the Colle Verde Residency' in Lucca, Italy 2000-2001.
Sparkes has created an installation that takes its inspiration form the name of the gallery space, 'The Patriothall'. Playing with the significance of elevating names to a position of dominance, names and titles are spelt out on bunting flags that reign above the viewers head, raising the question have we entered a political arena, a royal jubilee, a sporting event or a village fete? The theme of borders is continued in Sparkesí three evocative paintings of shorelines. This trilogy is from a series of small, intense lanscape paintings, these 'Haunting little painitngs' 'draw the viewer into a larger world' (Chris Schuler, The Independent).
back to top of page
|
|
|
Vicky Viola
Vicky Viola was born in Edinburgh in 1984 and completed her BA with Honors in Fine Art Photography at Glasgow School of Art last year. Although she is a recent graduate she has already participated in exhibitions in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Leipzig, Germany. Viola is interested in pop culture and our obsession with fame and the famous. Although her work is largely photography based, she is also interested in installation art, ready mades, fashion and illustration. Combined, the artworks examine youth culture through the eyes of a 22 year old
"My work pays homage to popular musicians that have influenced music, fashion and art over recent decades. The album covers I have chosen to work with are instantly recognizable to the viewers. I am interested in how powerful these images are and how they have helped to develop pop culture into what it has become today. With our current obsession with fame and the famous and endless shows like Pop Idol and X Factor, I place myself as the musician (etc) in the artwork as youth culture is infatuated with the unattainable desire of fulfilling their dreams of becoming their heroes."
back to top of page
|
Geraldine Swayne
After a degree in fine art she became a painter and filmmaker. She lived and taught in New Orleans, after winning a Northern Arts award. She then lived in a remote village in France, and was represented by Stanislav Demidjuk, before returning to the UK to work in London’s growing film industry, designing effects for any number of commercials and feature films. She exhibited her art at various venues in London, such as 291 Gallery, Rich and Famous and The Wine Gallery. In the 90’s also began to make music videos for MTV and the chart show. In 1999 she made one of the first experimental Imax film’s about the East End of London, which has been shown around the world at events such as the London Film Festival and Big Shorts, New York. Recently she has been collaborating with other artists such as Harry Pye and the band Faust, and has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows. She currently works as an assistant for Jake and Dinos Chapman and is a singer and songwriter in contemporary avant-garde rock band …bender.
"Borderline is a word that indicates the edge of a known place, (be it physical or mental), and the start of new one; a strip of no-man’s land; a personality disorder. The illness known as borderline personality disorder (BPD) has few positive traits. But some, such as the ability to be uncannily intuitive; to enter trance like states and (dangerously) to have few emotional brakes are desirable in some contexts such as the creation of art. In fact many BPD sufferers are artists. I was reading about the illness and was oddly excited and alarmed to recognise some of the characteristics in myself. I wondered if what I Or maybe disorders ARE gifts. I decided to turn camera around at myself and see what I looked like in a borderline state"
back to top of page |
|
|
Rufus Ward
Rufus Ward's work has visual and spatial narrative, it is ambiguous, introverted, often improvised, material led, decorative, abstract, figurative, childish, idiosyncratic, amateurish, organic and experimental. Rufus is interested in how certain imagery combined with a particularsurface can have a lack of perspective though still convey a sense of depth. The source of inspiration for images comes from 'an obsession with perspective, flatness, depth, time, my childhood art, insects, film, analogue and digital processing, the transfer of energy, visual politics, representations of the future, ephemera and the idea that a painting is best viewed from a particular direction (based on the role defunct computer entertainment systems played in the development of the visual/creative processes)'.
"The images themselves are created in direct response to the surface: an idiosyncratic development process that produces both figurative and non-representational objects. Rather than planning the composition beforehand I like to build up the two-dimensional picture organically so that each new mark is arranged directly onto the surface in response to the previous one. The resultant degredation from my particular choice of materials (latex and sterling silver) and the resultant sensory attrition is fundamental to his experimentation with the concept of wabi-sabi and notions of 'rustic' and 'sophisticated' in conjunction with positioning, surroundings, the natural and the synthetic".
back to top of page
|
