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18th October - 30th November 2006

"Meet me at Sunset"

Event organised by Gallery4allarts for the Liverpool Independents Biennial 2008

@ Gallery4allarts, Ullet Grange, 36 Ullet Road, Liverpool, L 17 3BP

"If you wait long enough something might happen" Belfast Exposed Photography; "Wanderer" by Oana Camilleri Urcan; "Untitled" by Marina Moreno

Featuring artwork from Romanian artists based in UK (London), artists based in Liverpool and Bristol, and International artists from Italy and Ireland, Canada.

Read PRESS RELEASE below.

“Meet me at Sunset”

Press release

Event organised by Gallery4allarts for the Liverpool Independents Biennial 2008
@ Gallery4allarts, Ullet Grange, 36 Ullet Road, Liverpool, L 17 3BP

Featuring, artwork from Romanian artists based in UK (London), artists based in Liverpool and Bristol, and International artists from Italy and Ireland, Japan, Canada.
Exhibition dates: 18th October - 30th November 2006
Private View: 18th October 2008, 5pm-9pm

Live art performance day: Saturday 1st November 4.30pm – 7pm

Artist’s talks: dates and details to be confirmed.

Closing event: 30th November 2008, 4pm-8pm


“Meet me at Sunset”


Curator and organiser:
Nicole Bartos, Gallery4allarts


*
Motto:
“ I believe that, most people have watched sunsets and at least once in their lives they have been overwhelmed by one. If you are between those who missed out, think about the next one.”

To offer a glimpse of the work to be seen at the Ullet Grange, as part of this project and exhibition, I could mention just a few works and statements.
From Birgit Deubner’s 3D installation, “Journey through the Forest with Virgil”, symbolising the “unstable, un-secured journey, the higher one reaches on it, the more risky, the more treacherous the fall, a journey, also, that at it's end may lead to nothing… or to the heavens…”, the show presents the audience with a variety of art forms that surprise and delight one’s eye and spirit, such as Roxana Tohaneanu-Shields’s “Liquefied Light” and “Black Madonna”, exquisite traditional photography giclee prints; Sue Ironfield’s octagonal acrylic paintings on wood, relating to “a new form the tradition of painting which emulates music, with its expressive numerical language, in order to reach a meaningful abstraction.”, but also to ‘light’ and ‘dark’; Lynn Jackson’s 3D installation knitted from metal wire and ‘rooting’ into the artist’s childhood memories and emotional world: ”My work compels others to recall their own childhood sadness, loss, happiness and frailty. These sculptures act as delicate sketches inviting the viewer to respond. It attempts through its fragility to be vulnerable to the viewer accepting a variety of childhood backgrounds and experiences into the work.”; Christine Oreilly Wilson’s abstract canvases with the intensity of vibrant colours that “flood the blank canvas “and where the “physical interaction with the paint on canvas is a vital method of communicating” ideas and where “The whole process is an attempt to relate the human condition by means of the pure aesthetics of abstract colour.”; Ada Villa’s “Musca”/”Flies”, in relation to metaphysical idea of sunset as ‘death’, where at sunset joins the idea of passing time and then, of old age and death… the awareness of an inevitable end…”; Michael Meldru Medjivepjis’s “PIANO MUSING”, “research and experimental music composition and video production of improvisational music based on subjective release”, in which progressively filmed, static and nostalgic piano music performance, sequences overlap with and open into transitional spaces of Venetian night and water rhythms; Marina Moreno’s video installation of 4 monitors in which “the idea of displacement”, “is the essence” of the work. “Coincidentally, another factor in this work is the use of sound, which floats within the space, beckoning the audience, and displacing them, calling and collecting them to the narrative moving within the space. The 4 monitors are set out on the floor and the loops of the films are left to roll over and over while the sound is perceived in various parts of the building and attracts the audience, leading towards the installation. The visual presentation with the monitors at equal distance from each other and the wires being very visible give a sense of cold and clinical work; in total contrast with the video shown which is personal, intimate and sensual, melting with the sounds of the bells (in particular the Marangona). Bells function as a calling in many parts of the world. The dialect, whispered by the various passers by, is reminiscent of a specific place and yet still remains universal. Water symbolises a constant travelling, longing and change, mixing. Rhythmically, the movement of the waves has the same timing as the heart beat and the same quality of the rolling movement.”; Acitore Artezione and the artists core group from Belfast, working with Belfast Exposed Youth Forum, Belfast Exposed Photography projecting a collaborative “dialogue between the Ports of Liverpool & the Ports of Belfast, People & Place through a series of photographic actions scheduled over 12 weeks, from the 14th September – 30th November 2008.”; Nicole Bartos – configuring “metaphysical journey of the ‘Sun’/’Light’ in parallel, with man’s journey to joining this trajectory and meeting with the ‘Light’. A site specific white installation, using 29 meters of fabric and recycled card tubes, symbolising this trajectory together with series of photographic mixed media and wax work; series, resulted from the previous successive land art experiments during her meetings at sunset;
Joanne Ashbridge’s and Japanese artist’s, Nagachoo (“The chair”) live art performances, 2 very different presentations, during 1st of November 2008; and to paintings such as “Collective Phenomena” by artists, Fanchon Fröhlich and Alison Appleton and to the contemporary Chinese innovative style and colour mixing of acrylic on Pi paper by Lei Liang (China, Beijing).
The idea for this art project was born purely from a meditative state and the inspiration while watching numerous sunsets in Liverpool and French countryside. The decision to work on it this year and include it in the Liverpool Biennial came later on this summer, after meeting with a London Romanian official, promoting this late autumn’s Romanian cultural events taking place in Liverpool.
I decided this was the time to organise it and involve also Romanian artists living in UK, promoting this way more Romanian culture.
I have been provided, by the Romanian Cultural Centre London, a list of contacts referring to Romanian artists based in and near London and I have started from there, sending my project proposal and welcoming their submissions.
When local and international artists also where willing to become part of it, I was already very enthusiast and excited about the idea of the project coming together, materialising.

The main event of this project is the international group exhibition taking place at the Ullet Grange, during 18th October and 30th November 2008 at the address mentioned below. In total there are 24 artists involved. From all participating artists’ 6 are Romanians based in UK; 5 from Ireland; 6 based in Liverpool; 2 based in Bristol and Venice, 1 artist based in Canada and Liverpool, 1 based in Japan, 1 artist based in Italy and France, 1 based in China
In total there will be 24 artists participating to “Meet me at Sunset” project.
Main objective/exhibition:
The main event of this project is the international group exhibition taking place at the Ullet Grange, during 18th October and 30th November 2008.
Exhibition venue address: Ullet Grange, 36 Ullet Road, Liverpool, L17 3BP.

Other activities:
- Artists’ gatherings at sunset /past
During 19-23 September, prior to the exhibition, participating artists (audience welcome), will meet each evening to watch and admire the sunset and sky, (if weather permits), use their spontaneous creativity, communicate, share experiences related to sunset, meditate.
Places, for sunset gathering, as chosen by the curator, are the following:
Pier Head and Princes Parade (by the landing stage), Otterspool Park and Promenade (by the Mersey
Sefton Park (main field),
Princes Park (main field),
Anglican Cathedral plaza (and maybe top of the cathedral); top of Duke Street.
Some of the activities that artists might carry out during these meetings, according to circumstances, could involve: site specific installation (land art), photography and film recording, poetry reading, live art performance (dance), abstract painting, etc.
- Artists’ talks
During the exhibition, according to circumstance, artists’ talks are intended to take place, along 1-2 days. (Dates, times and artists to be announced; all information will feature on the www.gallery4allarts.com). Negotiations are ongoing now with Hope University Art and Media Department and the Liverpool WEA (Workers Educational Association)
- Live art performance day: Saturday 1st November 4.30pm – 7pm with Nagachoo, Joanne Ashbridge, etc.
Participating Artists
Artists involved in “Meet me at Sunset” come from various ethnic & cultural backgrounds, and places such as: Britain, Ireland, Romania, Italy, Germany, Canada, Japan, New Zeeland. There are 24 artists participating.
List of exhibiting artists:
• Acitore Artezione
• Joanne Ashbridge
• Richard Ashworth
• Alison Appleton
• Nicole Bartos
• Crina Boros
• Oana Camilleri Urcan
• Birgit Deubner
• Fanchon Fröhlich & ‘Collective Phenomena’
• Sue Ironfield
• Lynn Jackson
• Johanna Leech
• Lei Liang
• Michael Meldru
• Marina Moreno
• Nagachoo
• Christine Oreilly Wilson
• Silviu Pascalin
• Irina Dana Popa
• Nicholas Ryder-Martyn
• Roxana Tohaneanu Shields
• Ada Villa
• Ruairi Watson
• Kathy Young

Art forms to be exhibited:
Photography, Video art/film, installation/sculpture, mixed media, performance art, abstract painting.
Selected artists’ statements
Acitore Artezione - Statement
“ The intention of the proposed participation in ‘Meet me at Sunset’ is to open a dialogue between the Ports of Liverpool & the Ports of Belfast, People & Place through a series of photographic actions scheduled over 12 weeks, from the 14th September – 30th November 2008.
Collaborative
Artists & photographers in Belfast will meet on 12 consecutive Sunday’s at sunset on the banks of the Lagan River at sites, both historical and contemporary, that are associated with the movement of goods and people between Belfast and Liverpool.
Belfast & Liverpool as port cities have a shared historical legacy of an industrial past, the decline of the shipbuilding industry, migration and working class poverty.
Belfast Locations
Lagan River – Ports of Belfast – Belfast Harbour
Locations associated with the transportation of people and goods by sea to and from Liverpool
Liverpool Locations
Mersey River – Ports of Birkenhead/Liverpool – Birkenhead/Liverpool Harbour
Locations associated with the transportation of people and goods by sea to and from
Belfast
Artists/Photographers Brief
meeting with the unknown…the immediacy of the moment in tension with the transitional time and space of sunset… the ambiguities of historical and contemporary resonances… points of departure, points of arrival… the last images, the first sightings… the journey as a space… the setting of the sun, the twilight as a zone underlined with longing…

The objective of the approach is to allow a visual language of communication, specific to the project to emerge, a language that deepens and expands the parameters of the brief, a language that may even subvert or override the parameters of the brief, a language that invokes its own narrative and metaphysical reading.
An open invitation will be extended to artists and photographers in Belfast & Liverpool.
Lead Artist/Project Facilitator in Belfast:
Acitore Z Artezione
The core group in Belfast are young artists/photographers working with Belfast Exposed Youth Forum, Belfast Exposed Photography
www.belfastexposed.org
Five BXY Forum participants & facilitator will be in Liverpool from the 18th - 23rd September 2008”
Joanne Ashbridge
Art form: live performance art

Birgit Deubner - “Journey through the Forest with Virgil”
(Art form: Installation)
” From Babylonian times man has striven to reach the skies, to equal or rival divinity. So we continue to climb today still. Be it to reach goodness in life, be it in arrogance in the belief of our individual or collective supremacy (political for example, also see Babel as a reference…), be it in the hope that things will improve from bad to better or good to greater. We may seek love or status in society, godly/ divine blessing.
The aim is always upwards, ascent. The ladder describes an unstable, un-secured journey, the higher one reaches on it, the more risky, the more treacherous the fall, a journey, also, that at it's end may lead to nothing… or to the heavens… this is open to interpretation. The ladder is the most immediate vehicle to ascent and in the way that I use it I also think of it as signifying the growth of trees, I make the ladder the tree in a forest which is created throughout our lives. (…)
To achieve an abstracted folk tale/ dreamlike/ readable but non-direct narrative with references to today's society's focal points as well as to those of past times.”

Christine O’Reilly Wilson – Statement
“ My starting point for creating a painting will always be to flood the blank canvas with vibrant colour. This colour is applied in thin translucent layers that build up the intensity and opaque appearance of the base layer. Contrasting colours are applied in stages. Paint is brushed, sponged, poured, and dripped down the surface. I will then soak areas of freshly applied paint, scrap into the surface to soar and reveal what is beneath thus giving a history to the construction of the image .The physical interaction with the paint on canvas is a vital method of communicating my ideas. I will become so absorbed in the creative working process that my conscious and unconscious intellect seeps into the piece of work. The whole process is an attempt to relate the human condition by means of the pure aesthetics of abstract colour.”
Crina Boros - Artistic statement

“Loosing a paradise or having it misplaced is the moment when one goes through significant change. One either turns to chasing profanity, or strives to remember who they were despite the inability to return to that stage. One finds themselves entrapped in another routine for assembling a fresh world, meant to bring happiness, only to lose it afterwards in the vicious circle of degradation and nostalgia.
My work addresses the sense of home and belonging, using as primary source the globalization phenomenon and its impact on the preservation and alteration of identity. Through photography, sound and writing, I document the articulations and transformations of intimate inner worlds at the edging of refuge and home.”

Dana Irina Popa – “Landmarks” - Statement
“ Alf Kebbell has been living in Elephant & Castle since 1982. He is blind; or "registered blind", he prefers to say as he has some sight out of his right eye.
Alf can distinguish extremely strong lights, as in a neon bulb. He can sense and see a shape if something is moving towards him at a very close distance. Most blind people do not live in complete darkness.
On a bright sunny day though, his sight would not be of any help at all; everything under the sunlight would appear too washed out to get any shape and the shadows would become black confusing patches. His greatest difficulty is to walk when it has rained and the sun shines on the pavement. That blinds him completely.

Alf uses a cane. Though in Elephant & Castle he does not need one to find his way around. He uses it so that people do not bump into him; they still do. He has been taking the same routes, stepping on the same pavement, passing by the same shops and street poles. He has gained the most precise notion of where everything lies in Elephant & Castle. Alf navigates precisely relying on his landmarks.
The subway was harder to learn as the sounds are all the same inside it and if you are blind there are no clues where you are, except for the light at its end, extremely contrasting to the darkness around. One door in the wall is one of those landmarks without which Alf would find it more difficult to find his way around. Touched by the cane, the door sounds completely different than the sound of the cane on the wall. He has to turn first on the right simply to reach the shopping centre. A neon bulb, reflecting extremely strong light stays for the cigarette shop. From the tall advertising board, he has to walk only 5 paces at 45 degrees in a diagonal line to get to the mailbox. He has used this mailbox for 19 years. A dip in the pavement, the reminiscence of a tree, tells him exactly where he is. Alf feels this dip in the pavement every day. The telephone booths are an essential landmark towards the same bus stop, every morning. An old wall, of which he is aware for 19 years, now, marks the end of the park. From the gate of the park, Alf knows that there are approximately 120 meters along the fence to the last set of traffic lights closest to his home. And the football pitch, that leads Alf home, lies next to his house, on Newington Estates.
I tried to recreate the space Alf navigates through every day, portraying his landmarks at the moment of his passing by. Without them, Alf would be completely lost.”

Lynn Jackson – Statement
(Art form: metal wire sculpture and installation)
Drawing on memory, old photos and my mothers fading recollections, I have been recreating the clothing that I wore from infancy into childhood.
Using textile techniques and domestic skills my mother taught me many years ago, metal wire is knit or crocheted to recreate birthday dresses nightgowns, bonnets and booties that were thought to be lost in a distant childhood. Replacing the clothing has led to replacing the toys which I played with, such as Tabatha Twitchit, Peter Rabbit, the Mopsy Bunnies and
an un-named little yellow elephant that has a habit of sniffing up his dreams. Dreams being G.I. Joe, sports cars and a life of magic and fantasy. The dreams are cast in brass to become something permanent in my present recollections. Focusing on themes centred around emotional and physical displacement, the delicate sculptures recall the loneliness that I recall of living inside these clothes. The clothing is presented in a way we don’t expect to see it. An obvious and narcissistic obsession with pleading for maternal love, the work appears fragile, expressing the oneliness and fleetingness of time. My work compels others to recall
their own childhood sadness, loss, happiness and frailty. These sculptures act as delicate sketches inviting the viewer to respond. It attempts through its fragility to be vulnerable to the viewer accepting a variety of childhood backgrounds and experiences into the work.”

Lei Liang –“Sunset over mountain and water”
Art form: painting; acrylic on Pi paper
“ Creation for the majesty and splendour of the Sunset over mountain and water;
Anthem for the heroic exploits and prominence of emperor.
I will only create great painting for heroes.
Who are heroes? Those who show the utmost fortitude, always charge forward, dare sacrifice and go well up to bridle.

Art is a heavenly steed, powerful and unstrained, soaring across the skies.
Lava rolls so strongly that one can't express oneself without pouring out. Accumulating so long time that one would not give up if no wreaking one's thought.

The painting is quite special with my painting methods. People have never seen such kind of paintings before. The colour is that of Cezanne's strokes while the image mode includes Chinese traditional painting spirit, unique and refresh. This experimental painting in Chinese style is a courageous testing! Keeping painting on this way, one can auspicate a new painting style.
The painting contains strong emotional billows, a tangled combination of despair and optimism, gloom and vehemence, sorrow and joy, and at the same time, there exists a permanent placid as a sangfroid feeling after big sorrow and big happiness experiences.”
Marina Moreno – “Untitled”
Art form: Video Installation

“The title “Untitled” is coherent to this work, wanting to allow the viewer a broad margin of interpretation and feeling. I purposely avoid any suggestion in the title outlining what the work is about, but rather present to the audience an experience of the piece avoiding preconceptions.

The idea of displacement, examined in many of my latest pieces is the essence of this work. Coincidentally, another factor in this work is the use of sound, which floats within the space, beckoning the audience, and displacing them, calling and collecting them to the narrative moving within the space.

The 4 monitors are set out on the floor and the loops of the films are left to roll over and over while the sound is perceived in various parts of the building and attracts the audience, leading towards the installation.

The visual presentation with the monitors at equal distance from each other and the wires being very visible give a sense of cold and clinical work; in total contrast with the video shown which is personal, intimate and sensual, melting with the sounds of the bells (in particular the Marangona).

Bells function as a calling in many parts of the world.

The dialect, whispered by the various passers by, is reminiscent of a specific place and yet still remains universal.

Water symbolises a constant travelling, longing and change, mixing. Rhythmically, the movement of the waves has the same timing as the heart beat and the same quality of the rolling movement.”
“Surrounding Evidence of A Dancing Eye”
(Art form: Video Art installation, film and photography)
“ Meditative walk through light and darkness
a dance piece through the camera
the camera as performer.
absence
patterns
and shadows envelop the surrounding mysteries revealed by the lights
of our own personal visuals
accompanying our lives
and yet
dismissed by others.
“ In a very famous city such as Venice, known by everyone,
possessing countless stereotypical imageries,
this film unveils by way of its particular and fragmented narrative,
the feelings and visual memories of a removed native.”

Michael Meldru Medjivepjis - Artist Statement
(Art form: film and photography)
“ I am an inter-disciplinary contemporary artist based in Bristol England, working primarily in music based video and film production, photography, theatre, site-specific performance / installation. I am interested in producing innovative and experimental artwork.
As a sound artist I work reflexively from my soul, my daily experiences influence me rhythmically and melodies are plucked from conversations and movement. I allow my music to flow without inhibition or self-judgement as an echo to the noises that surround me.
I am interested in producing innovative and experimental work. Improvisation is a fundamental tool in the process of producing work and is a vital part of my process.”
Michael’s work includes video, film, digital and traditional photography, theatre, site specific performance / installation, sound and music.
“ I am a sound artist who trained as a musician since the age of five. All of my teachers beneficially informed me and raised my awareness of my identity as both creator of noise and as composer of music. I studied Classical Piano administered by Catholic nuns, Spanish Classical Guitar with Ben Caserta, a student of Segovia, these giving me discipline. Charlie Cooley, who toured and played guitar with Duke Ellington, smoothed me out with jazz, swing and bebop during my early teens. Russ Faith who scored many successful films guided me on composition and harmony, all very fortunate karma.”

Nagachoo
Art forms: live performance arts and mixed media on wood

Oana Urcan - Statement
“ My practice encompasses film, video, photography and painting, woven with narration, poetry and sound. It is a continuous search, as I always follow my wildish nature.
This weaving is a natural yearning – it is story-telling. It is quite mysterious how disparate elements come together to form a whole, an entity. A poem here, a fleeting memory there, a leitmotif, the sound… Sound can bring it all together.
Secretly, but also overtly, I want to alter the time of the viewer. As an artist, most of all, I am interested in creating ‘atmosphere.’
The intention being that the viewer is for a brief moment engulfed, engaged with the work in a form of reverie, a daydream of sorts, like Bellour’s pensive spectator.
I often make reference to literature and poetry. The fairytales of childhood are still vivid in my memory, the books I’ve read, the poems I’ve heard, and Tarkovsky’s films somehow make their way into my work.
There is a tinge of melancholy, a romantic tendency that is quite Romanian in nature.
And sometimes, a slight unease- it is a mystery!
Take time. Time is a re-occurring theme in my work.
Time, as the fabric of our lives.
Mircea Eliade, a Romanian intellectual and writer, who wrote the most comprehensive work on comparative religion, used to write fantastic novels with a particular interest in time travel and metempsychosis. When I was growing up, his books were banished and publishing ceased. But my mother had a few in her library.
And Chris Marker’s ‘La Jetee’…the story that starts and ends at the same moment in time!
Whether time travel, as in my film, ‘The Dakota,’ or being in two places at the same time, as in ‘The places where I live,’ I want to make time the fabric of my work.
In ‘The wanderer,’ time is again touched, albeit in a different way.
The character in this short piece is a young man who wears a World War II coat. Shot in colour and black and white 16mm film, we join him wandering through the English countryside, from a meadow with a windmill, onto a bridge, then into a forest and finally on a beach, throwing pebbles into the sea. Using black and white film and shooting with a 1950’s Bolex, I tried to convey a post war feeling to the film. He could have just returned from the war. We don’t know. We don’t know where he comes from or where he is going. This is the mystery I want to keep.
The sound, provided by my composer friend, Dan Grigson, aids the suspension of disbelief, adding an extra dimension, which I feel is necessary.
The excerpt from the 10th century Anglo-Saxon poem ‘The Wanderer’ is compelling and still so relevant. It belongs to the ‘ubi sunt’: ‘where are’ tradition of elegiac poems, a meditation on mortality and life’s transience.
The photographs of the crossroad somehow belong to the film, or the film belongs to them. I would like the viewer to be drawn to them, into them, as a start of an imaginary journey, the journey of the wanderer."

Ada Villa - Statement extract
“ Regarding the issue “Meet me at Sunset” my position is metaphysics, where at sunset join the idea of time passing and then old age and death.
In many of my paintings is found the anguish “Pasoliniana” of the absence of knowledge linked to the future, to the uncertainty of day, while the sacred place of memory is none other than what we want it to be.
My exhibition in Florence last year was called “Cutting memory” because it was based on the sunset life and the memories tied to childhood.
Even my new series, flies, is none other than the awareness of an inevitable end, to which we can not shirk (sometimes irony helps).
Then the sunset not only died pink but also in tone of pearly grey or darker blue night in a symbolism where rather than the actual canvas landscapes are saturated by emotional situations.
Currently my paintings are exclusively oil on canvas, although in the past I experienced pigments and wax.”
Richard Ashworth – Statement
(Artform: mixed media)
“ At present my aim is to produce some assemblages, hoping somehow to push them beyond the boundaries of my intentions, the illumination of the literalness of the material, and this in relation to my personal sensibilities.
Man in relationship to his environment
Or man in relationship to his self, creativity the evidence of man's existence.
Birds by their nature make nests and so it is evident that man in his nature, he is creative.”

ROXANA TOHANEANU-SHIELDS – STATEMENT
Art form: traditional photography, giclee print
“ Because a photograph needs to be “a photograph of something”, photography as an artistic process seems to be predetermined by the existence of particular real subject. Sometimes I accept this predetermination and try to capture the magic of mundane urban scenes, but other times I choose to rebel and create images where the boundary between what is real and what is not disappears.
The ongoing contemporary debate about photography as an art form raises interesting questions about the ontological status of photography. For artist photographers the medium of photography is indubitably a modern art form which deals with all aspects of life. My main interest in this debate is crystallised in two ways: theoretically through my philosophical enquiries into Aesthetics of Photography and practically through my own work, especially my abstract photography. Although there are some leading philosophers of art who argue against photography as an art form (see Roger Scruton) I take the challenge of producing work with evades a clear categorisation therefore, rebelling and creating unrecognisable images.
Description of the works:
The ‘Liquefied Light ‘photographs are a series of work where the light is the subject and the tool at the same time. Trying to capture the beauty of light is attempted through traditional photography (no manipulation is allowed) and particular points of view (usually close-ups).
In ‘Unitary Ascendance’ (Homage to Brancusi) I attempt to capture the repetitiveness of municipal architecture. Hopefully in the process of constructing my collage I have paid homage to the great Romanian sculptor.”

SUE IRONFIELD – STATEMENT
Art form: painting: acrylic on wood

“Sue Ironfield takes up in a new form the tradition of painting which emulates music, with its expressive numerical language, in order to reach a meaningful abstraction. She is stimulated by the qualities of intervals - octave, fifth, third etc. These emerge in the natural harmonic series or overtone row. Intervals are the building-blocks of music and represent universal principles of order-in-chaos.
Her springboard was Johannes Kepler`s analogy in his Weltharmonik or Harmonic Theory of the Universe of 1619 between intervals and polygons. These figures are shown by Sue to evolve from the fission of the circle, forming a mandorla or almond-shape, an iconographic element sometimes shown as a face. Sometimes a Yin-Yang curve instigates division and growth.
These heartfelt abstractions become dynamic, with strong line and vibrant expressive colour, and are enriched by various symbolic allusions.
The simple number series of the intervals, 1 2 3 4 5 etc, with their crystalline forms, are then connected to the Fibonacci series, 1 2 3 5 8 etc, a formula for growth related to the Golden Section.
From Sue` s poem HARMONIC IMAGES
Around its core number moves
pure forms
in and out of chaos, telling how the cosmos
means a flowing order. In music it vibrates
and speaks from the heart of my microcosm
and yours, where the own sound broods a folded
row of overtones longing to evolve.”
Excerpt (translated from the German) from a talk given by Art Historian Dr. Peter Holzwig at Sue`s exhibition in the Robert Schumann Music College in Düsseldorf.

Nicole Bartos – “Meet me at Sunset” - Statement
(Art form: land art & indoors installation, photography, mixed media

“ Preoccupied with the philosophical and spiritual side of art, I create and curate as a means towards therapy/healing, growth and expression of both spiritual and physical wellbeing. I love the idea of freedom through art and aim towards connecting and communicating energies. Mostly, I create 2D works, paintings, mixed-media, photography and also installations, using organic and natural materials which store energies and resonate with time, love, light, etc. and I work spontaneously.
I believe that, most people have watched sunsets and at least once in their lives they have been overwhelmed by one.
To symbolise a metaphorical journey of the sun/light and, in parallel, man’s journey to joining this trajectory and meeting with the ‘Light’, I intend to create a series of interactive, progressively developed and metamorphic installations which will include, at the last stage, series of photographic work and film.
The work will be interactive and presented outdoors (as land art, created during the sunset gatherings, in various open places around Liverpool) and indoors (during the final exhibition at Ullet Grange); will develop and change progressively.”


updated 8 October 2008, Liverpool
Text put together by Nicole Bartos/Gallery4allarts
Statements copyrighted to named artists.


For more information please, contact Nicole Bartos:
nbartos@gmail.com or
07756912911

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