I am delighted to have some studio shots made by the talented Jasmine Hovsepyan
Alexandra Baraitser
artist and curator
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Spotted myself on The One Show at The Royal Academy of Arts during varnishing day!
Delighted to be selected for this!
IT ROSE AND IT FELL
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A Pull Or A Push, Thames-Side Studios 2024. Image by Ben Deakin.
A Pull or A Push
Curated by Alexandra Baraitser
Thames-Side Studios Gallery (main gallery)
Unit 4 Harrington Way, Warspite Rd,
London SE18 5NR 3 Feb — 18 Feb 2024
Thames-Side Studios Gallery open Thursday-Sunday 12-5pm during exhibitions and by appointment. For general Thames-Side Studios Gallery enquiries please email info@thames-sidestudios.co.uk
Earlier this year I curated a mixed show at Thames-Side Studios this month.
The exhibition brought together works by artists who explore the power of push and pull in all media. There’s a feeling of struggle to each piece of work that results in a push and a pull. You can learn more about each artist and their process by visiting their websites (see below).
Katie Pratt, Zazure, oil on canvas , 75(h) x 63(w)cm, 2020
Günther Herbst, Composition with Grid (Rhomboids), Acrylic paint on canvas, 126 x 162cm, 2022
Sheila Volmer, Raspberry Cross-beats, steel zinc and colour passivate and paint finish, 62 x 182 x 127cm, 2022
Alexandra Baraitser is a curator and artist. Her paintings have been in numerous shows, including the John Moores Painting Prize and the Natwest Art Prize. Baraitser’s paintings are a celebration of contemporary design and architecture and are based on images she selects from vintage magazines. Through painting she hopes to invite discussion of the relationship between ‘high art’ abstraction and iconic design. Baraitser’s work was selected for the ArtCan Open (2018) and the Cambridge Show, Kettle’s Yard (2019). She has been the recipient of the Abbey Scholarship in Painting (the British School at Rome). She showed solo at Hirschl Contemporary Art, Mark Jason Gallery & AMP. www.alexandrab.org.uk
Miranda Boulton is a painter whose work focuses on the history of still life floral painting, curiously exploring what it means to dedicate a practice to the overlooked. She reimagines a genre once seen as superficial, feminine and slight. Memories of historical paintings are used as the starting point and paintings explore new motifs from old imagery linked through expressive layers of colour, gesture and form.They are meditations on the history of art but they are also alive to more urgent, emotional questions surrounding the fragility and transience of life. Boulton studied Art History at Sheffield Hallam University and Turps Art School. In 2021 she won the Jacksons Painting Prize. She is represented by Cynthia Corbett. www.mirandaboulton.co.uk
Srabani Ghosh studied Ceramic Design at Central Saint Martins (first class). The spirit of revival and innovation that underpins her work is born of a desire to create something recognisable and contemporary, which touches people’s memories. Working across ceramic and paper, her practice is rooted in traditional materials, processes, and an exuberance of pattern making, which combines her Indian heritage with observations of a life of diaspora. She has exhibited globally, with works held in private collections across Europe, Asia and the USA. In 2023 she was the recipient of the Royal Society of Sculptors- Gilbert Bayes Award & CAS Emerging Sculptors Development Awards, she won the 2023 Persimmon Chinnor Public Art Commission. www.srabanighosh.com
Rae Hicks holds a degree in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths University of London and a Masters in Painting from the Royal College of Art. He also attended the HFBK Hamburg as a guest student of Professor Anselm Reyle. Delusions, stories and theories of all shades form the narrative material of Rae's paintings and sculptures, in which objects and beings freely trade states and everyday things are filtered through the lenses of psychogeography and hauntology. He is especially fixated on paranoia and mania in postwar British sci-fi and the paralles it holds with the current psychologicallandscape. www.instagram.com/rae_hicks_/
David Leapman is a painter whose work explores a complex visual language of mystical signs and symbols. Major shows include, Aperto 90 at the Venice Biennale, LandEscapes and The East Wing Collection, Courtauld Institute, London. He represented Great Britain at the 26th Festival Internatinal de la Peinture and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Painting Prize(1998), the John Moores Painting Prize (2006) & the Jerwood Drawing Prize (2006). David was a First Prizewinner in the 1995 John Moores 19 and a prizewinner in the John Moores 20. In 2004, David won the Abbey Award Fellowship (British School at Rome). He was first prize winner at the 1995–6 John Moores Liverpool Exhibition.
www.davidleapman.com
Kathy MacCarthy grew up in post industrial Liverpool, her memory of abandoned domestic and manufacturing buildings throughout the city, coupled with the development of an interest in the body as form and mass has continued to be a rich and playful foundation for her work. The physicality of materials and making objects is at the centre of what she makes, whether it is clay with its malleable and slippery texture, allowing it to shift or even collapse into its own form, often interlocking with other forms or even using a lighter material, such as Jesmonite, which she can use to balance and extrude in a way that clay does not allow. www.katharinemaccarthy.com
Günther Herbst’s practice focuses on the appropriation and deployment of architectural
Modernism in South Africa. His work is an attempt to draw attention to marginal modernist aesthetics in order to reconceptualise and reinterpret hierarchical colonial frameworks that developed out of the centre of European Modernism. The towers reminiscent of Constantin Brancusi and mounted interchangeably on the roofs of these domestic houses are intended to conjure up a well-known modernist abstract trope with the intention to turn these South African houses into memorials mourning the tragic events of apartheid and its relation to Modernism. His practice seeks to provide a contextual ground for what is a critique of Modernism and its inextricable relation to colonialism. Günther Herbst was born in South Africa and came to London in 1995. He studied at Goldsmiths University of London where he obtained his master’s degree in 2002. www.guntherherbst.com
Katie Pratt MA (RCA) (1998) is an abstract painter living in London. Winner of the Jerwood Painting Prize 2001, recent exhibitions include Rosie Mullan at Kingsgate Project Space, London in 2023. In 2021 she curated Autumn Attic at Flowers Gallery and other notable group exhibitions include Location /Dislocation at Mark Rothko Center, Daugavpils touring to Dubulti Art Station, Riga, 2020; Patrick Heron, Jonathan Lasker, Katie Pratt at John Hansard Gallery Southampton, 2006; Landscape Confection, curated by Helen Molesworth at Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus Ohio touring to Contemporary Arts Museum; Houston Texas and Orange County Museum of Art, California 2006. Solo Exhibitions include at Galerie Peter Zimmermann, 2012 & 2016; Fine Art Society, London, 2012; Kontainer Gallery Los Angeles, 2003, 2005 & 2008; Forum d’Art Contemporain, Sièrre, 2003 and Houldsworth Fine Art London, 2001 & 2003. www.katiepratt.net
Zoe Schoenherr MFA(Slade)(2012) is a multidisciplinary artist who creates sculptures informed by the analysis of the moving body and the built environment. She has collaborated with professionals from dance, engineering, architecture and choreography and produced work in world-renowned facilities such as the UCL laboratory’s Pedestrian Accessibility Movement Laboratory. She holds an MSc in Environmental Psychology from University of Surrey (2019). She has been nominated and selected to participate in national and international residencies, including QatarUK, Qatar &18th Street Arts Centre, Los Angeles and shortlisted for Mark Tanner Prize & First Plinth 2021. She has won funding from Art Humanities Research Council, British Council and Leverhulme Trust. www.zoeschoenherr.co.uk
Sheila Vollmer explores line, form and space, using steel, wood, skirting board, rope and tinted Perspex. She references architecture, natural systems, and our physical and emotional relationship to these. Her method responds directly to material and space. She constructs her sculpture in a modular rhythm of replicated changing units; both opening and containing space, searching to express the inside/outside pull of energy. Added colour accentuates line, form and space creating rhythm and energy to ever-changing views. She has exhibited widely in the U.K. and featured in group exhibitions in Ireland, Holland, Taiwan, Germany, Canada and USA. Solo exhibitions and commissions include Sine Line, Public Sculpture Commission, Milton Keynes, 2020 and Artist of the Day (solo), Flowers Gallery Central, London 2015. www.sheilavollmer.com
Srabani Ghosh, WHO MAN? Mumble Jumbled 200(h) cm x 158(w) cm, Ink, wool, found print on Indian rag paper, 2023
A Pull Or A Push
Thames-Side Studios Gallery 3-19th February 2024
Newton says in his third law that ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction’. This statement means that in every interaction, there is a pair of forces acting on the two interacting objects. A force is a pull or a push that acts upon an object as a result of its interaction with something else. For example if you sit on a chair it will push upwards on your body.
The forces of nature have fascinated and inspired artists for centuries and been translated into many artistic creations. Often artists attempt to break such laws and push boundaries (to make their own unique chaos) but at the same time they enjoy exploring balanced elements. In this exhibition the action of push and pull is reflected in the artist’s process, ideas and materials, resulting in some interesting sculptures, ceramics and paintings.
From as far back as 550 BC artists have been exploring the notion of push versus pull. Two clear examples would be the Etruscan bronze statuettes of double-headed lions and the anthropomorphic two-faced sculptures from ancient Rome. Later abstract artist Mark Rothko used fields of colour pushed together to create an impact and painter Bridget Riley pushed and pulled using painted lines moving back and forth for an optical effect. Today Richard Serra’s sculptures form strong bonds between forms and materials creating a balancing act of pull and push.
A Pull or a Push is an exhibition about connection and communication exploring pattern, colour and process. What happens when two opposing forces pull or push against each other creating tension? A painted line can both pull and push away simultaneously creating a tug-of-war, an equal and opposite reaction, and we know that a painted blob can affect how we view a neighbouring mark. The work in A Pull or a Push forms a dialogue set up by the tension and struggle within the artist’s subject. The resulting pieces are both chaotic but at the same time structured and infinitely complex.
https://www.thames-sidestudios.co.uk/news/exhibitions/2024/a-pull-or-a-push
Miranda Boulton Cadence II, 61(h) x 76(w)cm, Oil and acrylic spray paint on canvas, 2023
Kathy MacCarthy Slumped, Glazed ceramic, jesmonite 60(h) x 46(l) x 30(w)cm 2023
David Leapman, Thinness Chasers, Acrylic and coloured glass pigment on canvas, 84 x 109cm, 2001
Alexandra Baraitser, Building With Colour, 153 x 190cm 2023. Photo by Ben Deakin @bjdeakin_photography
Rae Hicks, Necropolis, 66 x 54 x 4cm, Emulsion, aggregate, cement, glue and acrylic on wood and oak frame, 2022
Zoe Schoenherr, Temporary Action, Sapele Plywood Gild and Card, 105 x 40 x 51cm 2024
IT'S MY HOUSE EXHIBITION, HOME HOUSE, LONDON
This exhibiiton was a collaboration between Offshoot Arts, Cura Art and A Space for Art. It’s My House is a group exhibition at private members club, Home House, 20 Portman Square W1 London.
Design of our Time, AMP Gallery, September 2022
Design of our Time AMP Gallery September 2022
MYO Dashwood exhibition orgainised by A Space For Art (@aspaceforart_com) March - Sept 2022
MYO Dashwood exhibition organised by A Space For Art (@aspaceforart_com) March-Sept 2022
I am pleased to announce that some large canvases are on display at MYO Dashwood, London. See above.
Click here to view my catalogue for In This Place.
See below for images of Willesden Gallery London October 2021
This month I am exhibiting at No Format Gallery
I have been featured in Cambridge Edition Magazine. https://online.bright-publishing.com/view/1003612827/12/
In November 2020 my work was on show at Terrace Gallery in Then&Now with Dan Hays, Karen David, Scott McCracken, Roland Hicks, Christina Niederberger, Laurence Noga and Toby Ursell.
OUT NOW: MY ARTICLE FOR ASSEMBLAGE MAGAZINE
ACID
Artists Community Internationally Dissolved
TRINITY ART GALLERY, LONDON
November 2019: Counter | Balance is a group exhibition of 42 UK and International artists. Each artist has created work that explores the shades of the emotional sphere. It wants to be a place of expression of how any of us approaches feelings of any kind.
KETTLE’S YARD
Last October I exhibited at Kettle’s Yard.
There is a page about my work on the Kettle’s Yard website. Click here
This exhibition explores these artists’ diverse practices, and some of the themes and issues that they are engaging with right now.
There are mid-career artists amongst those who are more established and there is a real range on display – from paintings by Claerwen James and Alexandra Baraitser to performance works by Paul Kindersley, Harold Offeh and Caroline Wendling. It is a celebration of artists in and around Cambridge. Kettle’s Yard
The artists were selected from an open-call to which 460 artists put forward work. The selection panel was chaired by Andrew Nairne, Director of Kettle’s Yard, and included Amy Botfield, Arts Council England; Guy Haywood, Curator, Exhibitions and Collection, Kettle’s Yard; Kettle’s Yard committee member Sabine Jaccaud, AstraZeneca; Issam Kourbaj, artist; and Harriet Loffler, Curator, New Hall Art Collection, Murray Edwards College.
ARB GALLERY
I was pleased to be included in Permeable Spaces last year. The exhibition explored how physical spaces shape our perceptions and behaviour and how in return we shape them.
Alison Richard Building University of Cambridge, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge Cambridge CB3 9DT www.crassh.cam.ac.uk
Kettle’s Yard, October 2019 (image Stephen White)
Giving a talk at Kettle’s Yard 2019 : ‘Poul Henningsen in the Demonstration Room 1939’ oil on canvas, 2016 76 x 100cm
The Kettle’s Yard website October 2019
I had work selected for Counter / Balance, November 2019 (ARTCAN)
This Instead of That ARTHOUSE1
This Instead of That was at Arthouse 1 in March 2019.
This Instead of That explores how artists respond to each other’s work and derive energy from their peers. An initial version of the exhibition featuring four artists showed at Lewisham Art House, 2018. A larger version of the show, co-curated by myself and Trevor Burgess showed at Arthouse1, London from 7 to 30 March 2019. I have been in a dialogue with Trevor Burgess for the last two years - and for this period we have been reflecting on each other’s work, selecting each other's paintings and making new paintings inspired by the process. We aim to tour this project to regional spaces.
A catalogue was published to accompany this exhibition with an introductory essay by Dr. Jane Partner, Fellow and Director of Studies at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and included conversations between the artists about their working practices.
Read my blog about how the show came about:
https://artbrunch.wordpress.com/2019/03/15/the-story-behind-this-instead-of-that/
This Instead of That is a show about artistic exchange - what happens to both representation and reality when artists get together to re-evaluate their ideas and influences through dialogue with one another. It looks at the processes and practices of artistic exchange, and focuses on the interchanges that are established when similar passions collide.
click here to download the catalogue.
A different version of This Instead of That showed at Lewisham Arthouse Gallery, 2018
Trevor Burgess (left), A Place to Live L6, oil on plywood 67 x 122 2013
Alexandra Baraitse (right) Lightness adnd Vision oil on canvas 94 x 94cm 2019
This Instead of That at Arthouse1
