Exhibitions
Derek Morris- 25 Years thinking.
Derek Morris will be presenting a selection of sculptures, drawings and prints in his solo show- '25 Years thinking.'
Saturday 11th September- Saturday 2nd October 2010.
Derek Morris:
"I consider myself to be operating within the European Modernist tradition of Constructed Art. The formal language of my current work is based upon simple geometry which emanates from the built environment, most particularly from the architectural device known as the squint which is a sloping sided aperture piercing thick walls between chapel and chancel in medieval churches and used for viewing. A modified form of this structure, which has the characteristic of concentrating one's gaze and drawing it inwards to a more distant point, appears in all my recent works which take the form of wall hung reliefs and sculptures. I have made these reliefs in ceramic, stainless steel, aluminium, cast epoxy resin and more recently plywood. These different materials lend their own special qualities to the works. In addition to the basic form of the squint and carefully chosen materials, repetition and shifts in perspective increase the complexity of the space which develops between the moving viewer and the static vertical plane against which the reliefs are displayed. Earlier works in this series had coloured internal backgrounds which shone through slots formed by a reflective stainless steel matrix. Others had sheets of coloured light. The purpose of both light and colour was to destabilise the spaces between and to encourage the development of particular moods in the viewer. More recent works, some of them maquettes for larger sculptures, increasingly use other means to disrupt the viewers gaze. In other words, the background plane is now disintegrating visually."
These works are increasingly without subject. They are concerned with colour in its own right, simple geometric forms, ways of seeing and the reactivity of materials one with another. In the words of Frank Stella, the American painter “What you see is what you see.”
Rebirth
Rebirth:
An exhibition of contemporary Japanese art and Japanese inspired art curated by Lorraine Cooke in collaboration with the Unearthed exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.
Art1821 presents Rebirth (Thursday 29th July – Saturday 4th September). The exhibition showcases the work of eight contemporary artists. Japanese artists Sahoko Aki, Megumi Baba, Tsunaki Kuwashima, Keika Sako and UK based artist Shaun Caton have produced works in response to ancient Jomon culture considering Jomon existence, how encounters with small objects affect our perceptions of the world, connections between contemporary art and ancient art and the role of archaeology and culture in the making of identities. Veronica Grassi, Jazz Green and Barbara Leaney’s art works reference the meditative and philosophical nature of Japanese culture in the translation of aesthetics which are synonymous with contemporary Japanese arts.
Unearthed (until 29th August) brings together prehistoric ceramic figurines from the Balkans and Japan for the first time. Over 100 figurines from Albania, Macedonia, Japan, Romania and the UK are on display. These include ornate Jomon figurines (known as dogu) from the Robert & Lisa Sainsbury collection. The exhibition offers you the opportunity to get up close to those tiny, enigmatic figurines and to consider some of the mysteries of these ancient objects. There is a series of contemporary art works (including works by Shaun Caton and Tsunaki Kuwashima) which challenge us to think more widely about figurines and the expression of the human form.
REBIRTH…
…An ancient culture revisited, rediscovered, readdressed, revitalised and remade.
Please note that the end date for this exhibition has been brought forward to 4th September from the 8th due to Summer holiday.
Russian, Eastern and Oriental Art Fair
9th - 12th June, Park Lane Hotel, London
Stand 37
Art 18/21 in conjuncton with ICA Gallery, India will be showing an exciting mix of work by Modern and Contemporary South Asian Artists including Shishir Bhatt, Birendra Pani, Mukesh Sharma and Ramesh Sharma.
Please contact the Gallery for more information or for tickets to the Reception.
Alec Cumming: forms that flow
Art1821 in collaboration with Alan Wheatley Art, Mason's Yard, St James, London
PV Thursday 3 June - please contact Gallery for an invitation
Exhibition: Fri 4th- Thur 24th June 2010.
Inspired Women Artists
Exhibition 26 May -26 June, 2010
Emily Gwynne-Jones, Margaret Mellis, Tessa Newcomb and Margaret Thomas
Inspired Women Artists – featuring four recent and current Waveney Valley near-neighbours who have made major marks.
Constructivist Margaret Mellis (1914-2009), latterly of Syleham and finally of Southwold, was famously encouraged by Ben Nicholson and a mentor to the teenage Damien Hirst. Her highly innovative abstract paintings and driftwood reliefs hang in public collections including the Tate.
Margaret Thomas, born in 1916, continues to paint waterscapes and interior scenes from her attic studio high above the Waveney with one of the best views over East Anglia.
Emily Gwynne-Jones has been an artist all her life (being the daughter of distinguished painters Allan and Rosemary Gwynne-Jones) and, from her base at Fressingfield, has developed a very sensitive and singular response to the rural world around her.
And Tessa Newcomb, who paints in Wenhaston and Southwold, and is the subject of a recent monograph by the East Anglian writer Phillip Vann, has emerged from the shadow of her late, great mother, Mary, as an artist of great originality and popularity. Her pictures are like short stories, with strange and secret narratives.
Mary Mellor- Toying with the triangle
...in her latest works Mellor shows us less can be more as her 3D reliefs move to the picture plane, the detail becomes sparser and the trompe l'oeil illusions toy deliciously with the eye...
Seductive Perspectives
Friday 26th March- Saturday 17th April 2010
Seductive perspectives explores the work of artists couple Roderick Newlands MA.RCA and Lorraine Cooke. Whilst each artist develops their own family of images, the viewer is invited to navigate the intertwining perspectives…
Raw Gestures
Saturday 27th February- Saturday 20th March.
Art 1821 kicks off its 2010 season with the work of Alec Cumming, John Midgely and Frank Pond. The exhibition includes a collection of work by Terry Frost.
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2010 Opening Show
Monday 4th January- Wednesday 24th February.
The Art 18/21 Gallery begins 2010 with a dynamic and exciting exhibition that brings together a wide ranging selection of well established and emerging artists, including sculpture, painting, printmaking and installation. The exhibition showcases the work of Alan Davie, Jason Gathorne- Hardy, Derek Morris, Ana Maria Pacheco, Eduardo Paolozzi, Colin Self and Jeremy Taylor amongst others.
Festive Cornucopia
Mon 30th Nov - Thur 24th Dec
A sumptuous cornucopia of wondourous things, including work by:
Peter Baldwin, Jason Gathorne-Hardy, Derek Morris, Jeremy Taylor, Andrew Schumann, Ian Starsmore, Derek Morris, Trevor Bell, Sonia Delaunay, Terry Frost, Alan Davie, John Hoyland, Piranesi, David Roberts, James Stark, Craigie Aitchson & many, many, more ...
Colin Self - Springs Fireplace Road
24th Oct - 21st Nov
“Sometimes I like to go out. Sometimes I stay indoors and get things done.”
David Bowie
Springs Fireplace Road is the title of the suite of etchings. Printed by Maurice Payne, we worked well together at Editions Alecto (1968-1971) and then drifted our own ways. A chance meeting in the 1990s reconnected us briefly and years later Maurice visited after holidaying in Norfolk and expressed that he’d love to, “Print anything” of mine. He printed some of my distressed Slade School student plates with a rare empathy, sensitive, semi-cleaned. The prints were startling, exact, rich. Delivering them, he left a number of different sized new plates repeating the offer.
I could simply ‘fall out of bed’, remain in my indoors, daydreaming, subjective state of mind and work – away from the printhouses, cities, studios and everything of the outer macro world. In a state of reflective ‘owing nothing to anyone’, as personal and non-competitive as a diary.
Some of these etchings are based on drawings created during the run in to my Retrospective exhibition in 2008, where I found myself having to make drawings relatively quickly since work would have to be abandoned to contribute fresh energies to the exhibition. They took on a character of their own and some became the point of departure of etchings in this suite.
I seem to work like I imagine a classical composer works at a symphony. Separate parts making a whole. Prelude, pastoral, crescendo, climax, soft, loud – different instruments orchestrating the overall vision. Different and all necessary moods, sounds, colours – but as one interconnecting overall piece. The weight of double base, kettle drums giving way to the triangle.
Since I parted company with monetarist Tin Pan Alley’s ‘discover them, work them then drop them’ constraints of London gallery art dealers, my works and exhibitions span painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, ceramics, etchings etc, as a composer embraces the instruments of the orchestra. Were someone, cryptically, to say some of these etchings are ‘easy’….well, that’s exactly what some of them are – the triangle in the orchestra.
I think these new etchings are about serendipity. The antithesis of ‘getting to the point’, having no apparent logic or theme. The backwater, which no matter what else goes on in worlds of speculation, hype, investment, money, power and fashion, simply remains true, constant.
I’d shyly retreated to the furthest corner of the Slade’s old antiques room in my first year to paint and make small etchings. In this suite, Springs Fireplace Road, I have naturally returned to the same ways I made those first term, shy Slade School etchings.
I never got the hard, over energised testosterone loud music of Bruce Springsteen. But after years of perennial burnout music he retreated to Nebraska to reflect on his life, re-energise and produced an acoustic guitar collection of more humble, sensitive songs. If there’s something of that in this project I’ll be happy.
Maurice Payne has a studio on Springs Fireplace Road in East Hampton, Long Island, USA. Questioning the name with Maurice he replied, “The ‘Fireplace’ was where in the past, bonfires were lit at night to guide in pirates like Captain Kidd and Bluebeard. Later, Maurice mentioned that Jackson Pollock had his studio, “50 yards down the road”. And the tree Jackson Pollock crashed into still stands by the roadside. So, by more serendipity Springs Fireplace Road has to be the name of this suite.
Colin Self, October 2009
Letters Home
Letters Home
Thursday 9 July - Saturday 1 August 2009
.... brings 'home' to norwich a group of NSAD (NUCA) visual art graduates, showcasing their latest work. The exhibition also features work by Ana Maria Pacheco who was Head of Fine Art at the school during the 1980's .....
image: Dan Bissonnet, new work, digital image mounted onto aluminium
Please contact the Gallery for an invitation to the Preview Evening
All artworks are for sale. A special publication Collected Essays which presents texts on the work of Ana Maria Pacheco (published by Pratt Contemporary Art, 2004) will also be on sale at the exhibition.
The Point of Perception
FORTHCOMING
Madi Boyd was recently awarded an arts grant from the Wellcome Trust for a project where she will collaborate with neuroscientists based at UCL, London; (Mark Lythgoe, Beau Lotto and Mark Miodownick). The project, entitled 'The point of perception' will result in an art piece based on research into the ambiguity of perception. Specifically, the team wish to investigate the tipping point for ambiguity in perception- the exact point at which there is sufficient visual information for the brain to comprehend what it is looking at. This will be researched with respect to form, depth and colour and will involve several art experiment events held in galleries in London and at the 18/21 gallery. The work will lie on the cusp between an art experience and a scientific experiment. The public will be invited to attend and provide vital research data from their responses to the work. A symposium to discuss the relevance of the project in the context of 'neuroart' will be organised by Helen Anderson, Phd student and lecturer at UEA, Norwich and Ben Martynoga, research scientist at MRC, London.
Madi works mainly in installation art- fusing film and built environments to create original and often mesmerising experiences. She essentially sculpts light - a blank canvas being a pitch-dark room. She has long been fascinated with all aspects of the brain, perception and the connection between seeing and knowing. Recently Madi exhibited in London at the Crypt Gallery, St. Pancras. The group show entitled Illumini", featured 14 artists who use light as a medium of expression or important element in their work. It was a highly successful show, which attracted over 7000 visitors in two weeks. The event was critics’ choice in Time Out and featured in the Daily Telegraph, and Madi's work was very favourably reviewed. As a result 6 of the artists subsequently exhibited in Langthorne Park, east London as part of the launch of the Cultural Olympiad in the run up to the 2012 Olympics.
More of Madi’s work can be seen at
http://www.illuminievent.co.uk/ and http://madiboyd.com/home.html.com
Conundrum
Press Release Conundrum- Ernst Nicol
Art 18/21 is delighted to present ‘Conundrum’, a solo show of recent works by Norwich based Printmaker Ernst Nicol, long time exhibiter of the Norwich Print Fair and much respected and admired Print technician at NUCA.
Conundrum: The solo show will host a wide selection of Nicol’s intensely atmospheric Etchings and Engravings, meticulously etched and printed by Nicol himself. Nicol’s background in etching and engraving goes back 30 years, tutored by the likes of Norman Ackroyd, Leonard Marchant and Keith Howard. As a result Nicol’s current work is undoubtedly executed with masterful skill, knowledge and expertise in the mediums of intaglio printmaking.
Nicol’s imagery attempts to ‘freeze’ a fraction of time in which light reveals a detailed glimpse of the whole, which offers the audience an entrance to fantastical portals of uninhabited environments. We are confronted with mind warping labyrinths riddled in timeless decay, sublime, isolated architectural spaces caught by transient shafts of light, and a glimpse of the solitary creatures that dwell in these long forgotten environments.
Conundrum promises to be a mesmeric exhibition, filled with mysterious worlds, pictorial puzzles and an insight into the alchemical processes and results of traditional and modern intaglio printmaking.
An Absence of Windmills: Part I. Diverse Practice in East- Anglian Art
An Absence of Windmills: Part I
Diverse practice in East-Anglian art
East Anglia is rightly acknowledged for its rich artistic heritage, stemming back to the days of the Norwich school of painters in the 1800’s. Two hundred years later, beneath the surface of this well-trodden landscape, the astute art collector can discover the presence of a number of art practitioners producing an exciting and diverse range of artworks within this East-Anglian landscape.
In its latest exhibition, Art 18/21 celebrates the diverse practice of some of the leading artists working within our region. Moving from the impeccably crafted and aesthetically enticing conceptual works of Andrew Schumann, to the large, initially challenging multi-media canvases of Rhonda Whitehead’s latest series, the viewer is invited to ‘touch with the eyes’. By contrast, the playful scenes expertly captured by the illustrative work of Helen Herbert and David Jones, toy with the pleasure of the everyday. Interspersed within the space are Mark Ward’s monumental and overtly ‘in your face’ colourful canvases depicting the unreal in a realist manner. Memories are questioned as the animals in his images appear to hang, suspended in reality. Eventually your eyes will rest appreciatively on the skilfully executed works of Peter Baldwin and Jeremy Taylor, two artists where the formal aspect in their work enthralls the viewer with the capacity to hold and intrigue the gaze.
An Absence of Windmills: Part I shows at the Art 18/21 Gallery from Saturday 30 May until Wednesday 1 July. All artworks are for sale with prices from £100 to £10.000.