Salon Event # 6

Christmas Exhibition (Tony Knox, Paula Smithson, Magda Stavarska and David Henckel) [07.12.2010 - 28.01.2011]

To conclude our Salon Events series, They Eat Culture’s Assosiate Artists and Salon curators, Kathryn Wheatley and Lisa Wigham, put on a show of the work of four contemporary printmakers, showing a diverse range of theme, process and practice. This selection presented bold, playful and thoughtful interpretations of traditional printmaking from artists based in the north-west of England, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Our four artists were David Henkel, Tony Knox, Paula Smithson and Magda Stavarska.

Tony Knox

Tony Knox is best known for the performance of his character of 'Mothman', a faded superhero and pseudo wrestler. The performances of this character are explored in different contexts from Grand Pro Wrestling rings to gallery spaces and international residencies, and earlier this year ‘Mothman’ travelled to India. These adventures are depicted through comic books.

Tony Knox enters into situations as an artist and photographer and the results blur the edges between the art world and popular culture. For this exhibition he shows a set of screen prints presenting themes of icon. Along with making these works Tony seeks out and documents meetings between him and his subjects- comediennes of past and present fame. This act excavates both the layers of celebrity and the bold and playful colour schemes at work in the prints.

Further information on the artist and his current research can be attained by contacting the artist at tonyknox99@hotmail.com or +44(0)7908575211

http://www.mothman.org.uk

Paula Smithson

Paula Smithson’s practice as an artist focuses on printmaking and the intricate labour of the handmade. Paula utilises strategic collage techniques, passionately assembled to make detailed collagraph printing blocks that come to life with the application of colour.
In the Salon Event her work presents lavish culinary illustrations, interspersed with intervening characters extracted from Preston’s Harris Museum collection of artefacts. Source materials are also discarded yet precious objects inspired by a combination of visits to charity shops, museums and stately homes.

Cakes, crockery and tableware play both hero and villain in Paula’s prints. Drama and a tragic narrative play a central role. Desire, temptation and guilt are underpinning themes, the preparation of food for entertainment, pleasure and anticipation, along with the enjoyment of indulgence and guilty pleasures.

For more about the artist, visit her blog: http://www.paulasmithson.blogspot.com

Magda Stavarska- Beavan

Magda Stavarska- Beavan often combines print based work with sound and moving image. This initiates a conversation between traditional printmaking process and advancing digital technologies. The connection between thought, language and communication is central to Magda’s practice and questions how language can affect our cultural identity? In print based work this is often explored through text as visual notation.

The piece exhibited touches upon feelings of inclusion and confusion through its use of the International Phonetic Alphabet- a visual composition of symbols designed to represent qualities of speech. Here the viewer may seek out familiarities, to be met with a code. The only way to break the code is to utter the sounds out loud. By hearing their own voice, the viewer can decode the narrative.

The typographical arrangements and ephemeral qualities in Magda’s work conjure memories of play, conversation and bilingual language exchanges. The narrative in the text is not the most important aspect of the work, but the process of exclusion and finding the key.

Visit Magda's website to find out more: http://www.magda-stawarska-beavan.com

David Henckel

David Henckel was recently commissioned to produce interactive digital wallpaper for the iPad. David’s prints continue to embark on an ever morphing playful path, treading between design and fine art. The work displayed was born out of his award winning AA2A residency at UCLan and marks a shift in interest from character and drawing based work to that derived from random mark making and the collaborative action of others.

David has extracted marks from surfaces such as a tabletop covered in scratches and marks made by hundreds of cutting actions. This serves as a record of the everyday activity of life in a communal workshop. These traces re-occur in screen prints; they take on a new life and interact with overlaid images of handmade models made by David using shaving foam. In his piece ‘The Ambassadors Reception’ the shaving foam models of skulls seek to reference anamorphic tricks of the eye made in a painting by Holbein entitled “The Ambassadors” featuring a distorted skull, initiating a playful exchange between ‘low’ and ‘high’ technologies and ‘low’ and ‘high’ art.

See David's work here:

http://www.davidhenckel.com

www.granimator.com

Artists featured in this exhibition are all members of the Art Lab Contemporary Print Studio at the University of Central Lancashire. For further information please visit: http://www.artlabcontemporaryprint.org/

Salon Event # 5

Chemical Tea Room (Brian Morrison, Rob Rusling, Victoria Haydn and Graham Hallam) [14.10.2010 - 30.11.2010]

The fifth, and penultimate, Salon Event of 2010 featured the work of Chemical Tea Room, a group of emerging artists from Blackpool and the Fylde who specialise in social exploration through photography.

The exhibition at The Continental was the first opportunity to see the entire collective together in one place presenting coherent bodies of work, and it turned out to be a truly exciting show. Alongside the exhibition itself the artists and the venue also held talks, workshops and an Art fair throughout the duration of the show.

Chemical Tea Room is made up of the following artists:

Brian Morrison

Brian Morrison is a documentary artist; his work currently explores ideas around gender and in particular non-hegemonic masculinity. His recent series ‘Our Aim Is To Survive’. explores the social environment of a local pistol and rifle club, in an attempt to challenge preexisting stereotypes. Brian’s work acts as a critique on the normative opinions associated within what is seen as a predominantly masculine environment. By exploring aspects that do not conform to the accepted idea of firearms Brian offers the opportunity for the viewer to question their own views and opinions.

Rob Rusling

Rob Rusling is a documentary image-maker. His current work has a particular focus on faith and culture and the blurred lines that exists between the two. His series ‘A Street in Clitheroe’ looks at the point where one faith group/community is told by those outside of itself that it has no place in a given society. This work tackles this issue head on as it is acted out, documenting the struggle of the small Muslim community and those who support them in Clitheroe, a small town in Lancashire.

Victoria Haydn

Victoria Haydn is a documentary photographer; her practice focuses on ideas based around a contemporary anthropology. Victoria’s current project, 'Laughter & Tears' documents the space that foster children inhabit whilst in homes. Personal space whilst in care is vital and can be a saviour for a great number of children. Personal items within the bedroom allow the children to feel part of something, and in turn create a sanctuary, in which they can place their trust and gain a sense of ‘home’.

Graham Hallam

Graham Hallam’s photographic practice currently looks at the relationship between human and animal and the anthropomorphic nature of this connection. Graham’s recent series looks at the relationship that exists between humans and dogs, in particular working and trained dogs. His work explores the idea of a relationship that exists for practical reasons, as opposed to a relationship with a ‘pet’. The images comment on working relationships in general regardless of species, these images show the connection between two beings with one purpose and the way this manifests itself as a relationship.

See more of what Chemical Tea Room do here: www.chemicaltearoom.visualsociety.com

Salon Event # 4

Flash Pick with guest curators David Henckel & Simon Plum [08.07.2010 - 10.09.2010]

They Eat Culture’s fourth Salon Event was also our most diverse with work from several artists in a range of different styles and media. Guest curators David Henckel and Simon Plum explored recent Fine Art degree shows in the North West to select promising work by emerging artists from Blackpool and the Flyde College, University of Central Lancashire, Lancaster University and Manchester Metropolitan University to create a diverse show of fresh talent.

They selected works by: Charlotte Utting-Brown, Emily d’Andrea, Florence Dent, Emily McGowan, Shona Harrison, Glen Moyers, Donna Kelly, Meredith Stokes and Joanna Wood.

Both artists say that they found it a learning experience having to choose work for such a particular space as the Continental and came away thinking differently about how to present these ideas to a new audience.

Kathryn Wheatley, one of the curators of They Eat Culture’s Salon work, said “This event showcases the sheer range of ideas coming from the region’s degree students – the level of creativity on display is breathtaking and easily equals work coming out of bigger cities.”

Salon Event # 3

Jon Pilkington - Installation of Drawin' - White Fright' [23.04.2010 - 10.06.2010]

They Eat Culture’s third Salon Event featured a plethora of work by North West artist, Jon Pilkington. Hung in true salon style, small scale pencil, paint and pen drawings and dishevelled photographs taken with out of date film stock graced the walls of The Continental’s ‘Snug’ area.

Intending to challenge the notion of drawing and question what is traditionally considered a ‘good’ drawing, the work was purposely raw, unframed and, sometimes, unfinished. The focus instead was on the sheer volume and variety of images that the artist had produced as a way to spontaneously document his view of the everyday in all its myriad forms.

As part of exhibition, Jon initiated an ‘Art Exchange’ for the opening This was an opportunity for the public to interact with and respond to the exhibition. Jon invited the audience to exchange or trade something for one of the drawings that was of perceived equivalent value and that they felt was relevant, or in some way challenged, the work they had chosen.

The Installation of Drawin' was about the DIY ethic of making art, how much people value and appreciate art and what they will do for it.

Salon Event # 2

Simon Plum – Selected Works [23.02.2010 - ]

The second installation of They Eat Culture’s new Salon Events series featured the paintings and drawings of local Preston artist, Simon Plum.

Born in Preston Simon paints and draws in a variety of mediums including; oil, acrylic, watercolour, pencil, charcoal and ink. The subject matters he depicts are just as varied, creating Breugel-esque paintings incorporating bizarre half-man half-beast characters involved in vivid imaginative acts. These allegorical scenes draw on the history of medieval works where each character symbolises a particular meaning.

To the other extreme Simon produces loosely painted landscapes of Preston or Manchester where shadowy edges of the canal or bus station are rendered in colourful chiaroscuro, making these grim, usually ignored, corners beautiful.

In more ambitious pieces he combines these two styles with unusual narratives and strange animals are seen to parade the streets of Preston, holding picnics on Tythebarn Street or running through Avenham Park. He sees these paintings as naive and surreal evocations of past memories and finds that the tales become increasingly complex as certain recurrent characters evolve.

His interests lie in the anxieties, desires, nostalgic yearnings and absurdities that govern our behaviour, or more specifically his own. There is a blurred distinction between comedy and tragedy, reality and fantasy, the past and the present, with the stories in his paintings drifting between these areas.

To see more of Simon’s work visit: www.simonplum.com

Salon Event # 1

David Henckel– Selected Works [15.12.2009 - 31.01.2010]

An exhibition of paintings and prints from Preston based artist David Henckel launched They Eat Culture’s new strand of curated exhibitions at The Continental, Preston. David's work is informed by the personality of everyday objects and how they might interact when placed together on the canvas. Through a playful process of sampling and automatic drawing he combines elements of vegetation, science fiction, furniture, architecture, vehicles and other stuff to create characters and forms with absurd and comic tendencies. There are strong elements of street-art in these works including the cartoon-ish influence of the New York School painter Philip Guston.

He sets himself the challenge of creating new characters based on a loose set of rules; whether they are to be all three legged or monopods; or trying to bring out the inherent character without the use of expression or eyes and utilising shape or posture rather than a face.

A narrative then evolves as these 'sculptural-objects' face each other as if there is some sort of hidden dialogue. The canvas also develops like a piece of writing working from left to right and down the canvas, flattening perspective and giving each character its own space suggesting code or pictograms. David thinks of them as “quantum soup, packets of information, genes or tiny building blocks of unlimited potential.”

To see more of his work, visit: www.davidhenckel.com