Contemporary Painting – 28th October to 8th November
Contemporary Painting
28th October to 8th November
Join us @bricklanegallery opening on Instagram
Live – 28th October 6pm
The Brick Lane Gallery is delighted to announce the opening of ‘Tempo’, a group show comprised of eight incredibly talented artists working to their own rhythm. As the pace of daily life returns somewhat, or rather we become adjusted to a new speed of motion, the work in this exhibition pulses with an invigorating energy and flow. The captivating ballerina’s that provide the subject matter for the artist Farhat Gul’s ‘Swan Lake’ series have both a purposeful sense of movement and a delicacy to their gestures. They float across the canvas with an infectiousundulation that makes us want to join them. Don Kosta’s biomorphic figures are similarly permeated with an illusive flow, the abstract forms evolve and develop as we look at them. We see this sense of movement and fluidity throughout the work in this exhibition. It is front and centre in the cascading water paintings by the Czech artist Ivana Bachová, whom we are delighted towelcome back to the gallery, in the expressive tones of Sue Wicker’s intoxicating portraits of film noir stars, and in the animated landscapes of the supremely talented Mike Skinner. The sense of energy and urgency in the work of abstract artist Jessica Thacker is unflinching. Her paintings crackle with the emotion of their creator and leave the viewer transformed, whilst the work of Mark Noy offers a necessary antidote to the lively pace of the exhibition. His digital works depict a surreal fantastical world existent outside of our own temporality. This is most evident in the empty clock face in Temporal Tower. Noy’s work presents a respite from the rhythm of life as the Tempo begins to increase again.
Farhat Gul
@art.farhatgul
https://www.instagram.com/art.farhatgul
For her debut show at The Brick Lane Gallery, Pakistani artist Farhat Gul has produced an incredible series of realist paintings on the theme of the ballet ‘Swan Lake’. Gul’s sensitive and emotive brushwork injects each painting with a magical touch. Her beautifulrendering of the dancers’ motion, the delicacy of their movement, and the sense of purpose in their gestures, unite to bring Tchaikovsky’s seminal work to life on the canvas.
After graduating in Fine Art from the University of the Punjab in Lahore, where Gul was taught by notable professors, Anna Molka Ahmed and Ghulam Rasul, her early work focused on highlighting the natural beauty and cultural diversity of her surroundings in Pakistan. In this latest body of work Gul takes lead with each brush stroke to translate the sensitivity of feeling and thefluidity of movement into a visual masterpiece.
Theartist dedicates this work to ‘all those who contributed towards making ‘Swan Lake’ a work so enduring and powerful.’
Ivana Bachová
@ivana.mrazkova
https://www.instagram.com/ivana.mrazkova/
Ivana Bachová is a Czech artist who works to investigate the interrelation between the natural environment and the experience of life itself. Bachová provides a pure expression of being, liberated from conceptualisation, direct and ever-changing. Primarily painting landscapes, nature is her main inspiration and subject matter. The series of work on show in our current exhibition highlight the artist’s affinity with the element of water. Bachová examines the movement of the current and the flow of the river, considering its ability to affect the landscape. She describes how the element is central within our lives and crucial for all forms of existence. In her beautiful and dynamic paintings we see majestic, lush variations of blue suggestive of the variation of the water’s depth. The cropped viewpoint positions us as the viewer within the water, creating a direct experience where we are one with the water.
Jessica Thacker
@jessthackerart
https://www.instagram.com/jessthackerart/
Jessica Thacker’s abstract portraits pulsate with energy. Thacker’s practice is reactionary to her internal experiences and feelings. She responds to how she is feeling by expressing herself on the canvas. The result is like a release of tension; the brushwork is expressive and impassioned, the colours are fiery and incensed. Thacker’s palette is varied but the colours never become muddy, rather they work in unison to delineate the form of her humanoid faces.
Profits from Wash will be donated to The People’s Art of Kindness, a project co-created by Thacker to contribute towards the well-being and education of children and their care givers in order to helpsupport grass-roots charities around the world. Their goal is to promote education and creative expression around the world by offering ongoing support, learning resources, and art outreach projects to children and their communities to ‘create a positive change for a bright future.’
Mike Skinner
@mike.urbanwall
https://www.instagram.com/mike.urbanwall/
The Brick Lane Gallery is thrilled to be showing works be the incredibly talented Landscape artist, Mike Skinner. Based in London and Gloucestershire Skinner has been working as a freelance artist for the lastfifteen years since discovering his affinity for art at a young age. Skinner’s artistic focus has predominantly been on landscapes and cityscapes, often capturing the evolution of modern Britain. His work is gestural and vibrant, created using a variety of media to conjure a scene full of atmosphere. Field View is a dynamic and energisedrendition of the familiar British countryside. The expressive nature of thework seems almost to replicate the affect of the changing seasons on the landscape. Green and patterned vertical lines indicative of growth are paired with broad washes of umber.
Skinner has previously explored abstraction and figuration in his work, however it is his landscapes that have earned him much recognition and acclaim. His work has been shown at, among others, The Mall Gallery, The Menier Gallery, and in The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. In 2019 Skinner was featured on Sky’s landscape artist of the year.
Sue Wicker
@ suewickerart
https://www.instagram.com/suewickerart/
Inspired by film noir, Sue Wicker’s incredibly striking portraits capture the genre’s leading ladies in colour. Using a simplified colour palette of expressive tones, Wicker begins by building layers of thin acrylic washes. She positions herself as the subject, assuming their character in order to best express their feelings. The dramatic use of colour and lighting imbue the work with a heightened psychological tension, characteristic of the genre. The subjects of the portraits have a fragility to them, the use of colour and shape draws our attention to the sitters but they often avert our gaze. When they do meet the viewer in the eye, the expression is intense. We see this effect in Candy; the use of pastel colours in this portrait contrasts the intensity of her eyes, as thesubject, rendered in 3Ž4 pose, turns to meet the viewer with an undetermined expression.
Sue Wicker completed her MA in Fine Arts from the Arts University Bournemouth in 2017. Her previous work has been published extensively and exhibited in various venues, including
Poole Lighthouse Gallery, Shards summer gallery and The Mulberry gallery, Weymouth. She has also worked on commissions for the National Osteoporosis Society and the Butterfly Foundation. She is currently on an explorative journey around Europe.
Don Kosta
@ don_kosta_arts
https://www.instagram.com/don_kosta_arts/
Born in North Macedonia and now based in Germany, Don Kosta’s unique geometric abstract paintings elegantly combine elements of Cubism, Impressionism, Classical art and Futurism. Since venturing into art at a young age, Don Kosta has gained recognition for his comics, his tattooing practice, and his advertising campaigns but we are thrilled to be showing his return to contemporary painting. In Wicked Game, Memories, and Wild Horse, the figures emerge out of the indistinct background of biomorphic shapes. Indicated by their brightercolours and patterning the figures are in motion. In Wicked Game, two figures materialize out of the picture surface; the top figure appears to be pushing away from the background in an exertion of effort to metamorphose away from tonal background, whilst in Wild Horse the organic shapes appear more anatomical and are reminiscent of muscle. This is particularly noticeable in the head of the horse where the teeth and eye are shown naturalistically as opposed to the cellular shapes which comprise the rest of its body.
Niamh Birch
@ neeevb
https://www.instagram.com/neeevb/
Thick luscious paint and harsh black marks are beautifully juxtaposed by the cheerful and somewhat humorous element to Niamh’s work. Her paintings reference the historical motif of the ‘still life’ whilst her technique is emotive and representative rather than precise.
Somewhat reminiscent of Picasso in their juvenility whilst her use of colour and texture is considered, the work feels both precious and expressive.
It can begin with words, thoughts, stories or objects. Overhearing fragments of chatter in the streets, an ‘ordinary’ object, everyday life dilemmas and the thoughts we encapsulate ourselves in, I make a physical note of which are continuously becoming part of my mantra. These ideas are extracted playfully onto an array of surfaces, focusing directly on my colour palette. Whilst working with diverse materials I also rejoice in small-scale sketchbooks which often become the ultimate extract through the form of visual storytelling; they also work hand-in-hand with the finished canvases.
Niamh Birch is from North Devon, England and is currently living in Bath having graduated with a 1:1 in Contemporary Arts Practice BA(Hons) at Bath Spa University.
Mark Noy
@inkcontrast
https://www.instagram.com/inkcontrast/
Mark Noy is a 25-year-old illustrator and concept artist from the Netherlands. He creates fantasticalscenes that transport the viewer to another time and a world where castles float above the clouds and creatures of the night roam in lands underground. It’s evident that his work is inspired by the fairytales that so many of us are familiar with from our childhoods, however his work is considerably more mysterious and ominous than the standard bedtime story. In Maelstrom two figures are shown falling in a mirrored image within a whirlpool beneath a stormy sea. A singular eye stares out from the center of the composition, it separates the two vortexes and is surrounded by multiple other eyes that span out from the centre like eyelashes and transform into unearthly tendrils.
