Art in Mind Exhibition, 1st – 13th August
ART IN MIND EXHIBITION
1st – 13th August
Preview: Wednesday 1st August 18:00 – 20:30
The Brick Lane Gallery, 216 Brick Lane, London, E1 6SA
PETER GLANFIELD | TAMARA TOLLEY | EDNA PIORKO | HILARY BEAUCHAMP MBE | ABZ HEYWOOD | AMBER YI ZHENG | ILLUSTRELLY | RIYA GAJJAR | BARBARA HOLTER
Abz Heywood is a 20 year old, Cheshire based artist who achieved an A* in Fine Art and a distinction in an Art & Design Foundation Diploma. She favours semi-abstract landscapes and seascapes using a combination of paint and stitch. Her pieces involve the exploration of mark making which creates dynamic and energetic surfaces, enhancing the texture within an environment. She is inspired by texture and light, in particular within the sky as this depicts the mood and atmosphere of a painting. She communicates her interpretations through layering the materials on the canvas and her main focus is to capture the spirit of a place, without the clinical detail of a photograph.
Abz is exhibiting in a number of gallery exhibitions including London, North Wales, South Devon & The Isles of Scilly throughout 2018.
https://www.instagram.com/abzheywoodartist/ https://www.facebook.com/abzheywoodartist/
Amber Yi Zheng is a Chinese fashion designer. She works around sustainable issues in fashion industries since she studied at Central Saint Martins.
This collection is more about questioning and challenging today’s clothes production/ consumption and some widely-accepted ideas of fashion in today’s society. In nowadays consumption-oriented society, it too easy for people to buy much more clothes than they actually need. Day after day, clothes are being over-produced and then being abandoned to landfill. People hardly gaze at themselves inside before they make they buying decision nor do they consider the impact behind their consumption. This collection transformed and demonstrated the absurd side of mass production and human desire. It invites people to see what they should see but never see, to think what they should think but never think, and to do what they should do but never do.
Edna Piorko is an Israeli artist who has exhibited extensively over the past ten years. Her small intricate sculptures are delightful and are handcrafted by the artist.
‘As a child I dreamed of writing stories and illustrating them, but grew up into a practical profession. My artwork expresses emotions influenced by my private life story including 18 years of working as a social worker in prison and being touched by many souls and hearts. I create colorful ceramic fine art sculptures and miniatures. I care deeply about the human journey of life and so I connect with people through art. I love it when people say that my sculptures have an impressive presence, always have a story to tell and almost seem alive. I believe I am a writer who tells stories and also illustrates them with clay’.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/ednapio | https://www.instagram.com/edna_piorko/ https://www.facebook.com/edna.piorko/ | https://www.pinterest.com/ednapio/
Hilary Beauchamp MBE is a London based artist who was awarded the MBE for services to the Arts in Holloway priosn. She has exhibited in a variety of exhibitions in London and Oxford.
‘My subject matter provides the opportunity for different creative ideas. The puppets symbolize the human form without the distraction of personality. The interest for me was the representation of these figures functioning only by the manipulation of others who animate and bring life to these beautifully crafted motionless toys. The bats were drawn from plaster casts exhibited in the Smithsonian museum. I used ordinary biro pens to express the remarkable formation of their heads. So interested in the balance between the beauty and the perceived negativity of these creatures I modeled ceramic sculptures of these extraordinary natural forms. The drawing of “Green Lanes “ shows the changing face of our buildings as more and more satellite dishes are built. This small area of London seemed more than ever overpowered by this new architectural additions. The rest of my drawings were completed as a result of my 30 year work in Holloway prison in the Education department. One saw the worst in human nature and the best – one saw the sense of powerlessness and also the determination of the inmates to survive. Sometimes it was with courage-ingenuity – often with humour. The masks were inspired by street culture – the growing fashion to define individuality with tattoos- drawings on the skin and piercing parts of the body with jewelry’.
Peter Glanfield was born in London but has lived in Norway since 1973, exhibiting in several exhibitions in Norway. As a painter, Peter has painted in various mediums but always returns to watercolour, trying to capture nature’s fast changing light effects and atmosphere. The artist claims Northen Norway is a ‘treasure chest’ for landscape painters with magic moments to experience every day. Northern Lights, mountains, the ocean, lakes, forests and fjords are both savage and beautful and provide Peter with a constant source of inspiration. He cites his major influences as Turner, Lars Lerin, Lars Bakke and the Impressionists.
https://www.northernrain.no/about-us | https://www.instagram.com/glanpeter/?hl=en
Tamara Tolley is a resident artist based in the Barbican where she lives and works painting the view from her balcony. Her work offers a unique viewpoint of the dynamic relationship between her Brutalist landscape and the City of London beyond.
These five canvases form part of a larger series of work entitled “The Barbican and the City”.
“Barbican Nightlife” (top left) “Barbican Window” (top centre) offer an insight respectively into the solitary nature of the Barbican as well as its vibrant density.
“Builder on the Barbican Roof” (top right) and “Builders’ meeting, Monday Morning” (bottom right) shows the view down from Tamara’s balcony, over the roof vents of the Barbican Centre Roof down towards the Terrace in front of St Giles’ Church. These roof panoramic scenes were painted live (and spontaneously) providing a slice of life into the work that goes on in the Barbican and City beyond.
“Rainbow City?” (bottom left) looks back rhetorically to the night of the Brexit vote where some Barbican residents observed a double rainbow over the City of London. Typical of many other mixed media works by Tamara, this painting employs recycled palette papers and recycled paint as well as raw breakable textures like charcoal in an effort to show the constant state of flux in the City.
tamaratolleyart@gmail.com | https://www.instagram.com/tamaratolleyartist
Illustrelly is a 23 year old animal liberation/vegan activist, artist and illustrator. I was born in Iran and am based in Düsseldorf, Germany. Currently I am about to finish my Bachelor in Philosophy but I’m also working as a freelance illustrator and animal rights art. Illustration and art is going to be a fulltime job after finishing my studies. I found my love for art at a very young age, I have been drawing since age 3. I started with digital art one year ago and have been enjoying its manifoldness ever since.
I mainly draw for animal rights, aiming to spread the vegan message, aiming to be the change. My drawing style reminds of children’s book illustrations, I usually work with happy colours and cartoon-like characters.
My art conveys the message of love and kindness towards all beings. With my art, I try to show that a vegan world is possible. There’s no difference between a pig, a dog or a human in the ways that actually matter. They all want to live, they want to be happy and free. My art shows animals as what they actually are: individuals. I want to show their emotions, their innocence, their beauty, but sometimes I also show their suffering, the cruelty and the injustice. No matter what – when I draw, I feel free. It’s an incredible feeling to know that my art can actually make a difference in the world. For one person. For 10 persons. For 100 persons.
www.illustrelly.com | www.instagram.com/vegan.elly | www.etsy.com/veeganelly
Riya Gajjar began painting at a young age and earned a degree in Commercial Art from CN Fine Arts College in Gujarat India in 2006. She always wanted to be a realistic artist, however even her earlier works show a hint towards abstract expressionism.
Soon after college Riya sustained a shoulder injury that forced her to quit painting. Thus began Riya’s career as an RJ instead of a painter. As an RJ, Riya made a name across India by winning the ‘Golden Mike’ award. In the following years she kept herself acquainted with art, wishing all the while she had painted throughout. Finally, in 2016, when the doctor confirmed that the injury would no longer be a career killer, Riya got back to painting – her long suppressed desire to create art with a cause.
Since reengaging with her art, Riya has moved to becoming an abstract painter with a belief that you do not need a body to express your feelings and emotions. Her paintings immediately resonate with viewers. Riya’s works provide a subtle and sophisticated feel to her paintings through a distinct balance of texture, composition and colours. Fuelled by curiosity about various cultures practiced across the world, LGBT and Hinduism form her favorite subjects.
https://twitter.com/rjriya | https://www.instagram.com/rjriya | https://www.facebook.com/rjriyaahmedabad
Barbara Holter’s painting …moves between meticulous depiction and painterly abstraction, between love of and enthusiasm for nature and the feeling that “perhaps everything in the world is only a vehicle for shining and singing poetry…” (Valery Bryusov)
As a child, she would watch her mother, an academically trained painter, at work, and this imparted to her a first intimation of visual composition and the formal basics of drawing. Artistic understanding was thus passed on to her as a matter of course. After many years, she turned away from her earlier naturalistic approach, moving toward what one might call musical realizations – she uses the model provided by nature to develop her own artistic system, her own visual language.
Engaging in abstraction means making a choice, and thus bidding farewell to much that is “beautiful”. Good music tolerates no unnecessary tones! This takes courage and a calculating mind, but also sensitivity, because the decision regarding what should remain and what must go advances along a fine line of artistic feeling.
Barbara Holter has mastered the technique of painting in oils in an unbelievably short time, developing an artistic strength within it that would lead one to believe she had been working with it all her life – when actually she had almost never touched oil paints…
And yet she goes on and on, her palette, painterly gesture, ductus and compositional dynamism becoming richer with every painting, without losing decisiveness and exactitude of detail. I think that in the future the name Barbara Holter will be associated with an artistically independent, highly professional and self-assured painter. – Ekaterina Walser-Vassilieva.
