Glasgow International - Oxford House - Kate V Robertson and Carol Rhodes

Two beautifully considered solo exhibitions (by Kate V Robertson and Carol Rhodes) are housed within the quirky 'chicken-liver pate' coloured building that is Oxford House.

KATE V ROBERTSON

semper solum

Semper Solum is an ambitious new installation responding to the site and context of the courtroom in Oxford House – open to the public for the first time in its new incarnation. The works on show relate to individual and collective identity and play with ideas of binaries, opacity and judgement and hover between recent past and the near future temporalities.

www.patriciaflemingprojects.co.uk

This is a stunning exhibition in which the work draws attention to the features of the building as much as the features of the building frame the work.

CAROL RHODES

CONSTRUCTION SITE

Rhodes is known for her small-scale paintings depicting, from an aerial perspective, encounters between nature and human settlement. This show focuses on works made since 2007 and includes a number of the preparatory drawings that Rhodes makes for each of her paintings. These have rarely been exhibited anywhere and are for the first time being presented in direct dialogue with her paintings. The intention is to reveal the deeply layered and rich complexity of Rhodes’s practice.

The colour palette of many of the paintings is ideally suited to the tones of the gallery space.

http://glasgowinternational.org/festival-2016/programme-2016/

Louise Hopkins and Carol Rhodes: Drawings, Paintings and Prints at Edinburgh Printmakers

This afternoon I thoroughly enjoyed the preview of Louise Hopkins and Carol Rhodes: Drawings, Paintings and Prints at Edinburgh Printmakers.
The exhibition presents the two artists’ responses to Below another sky an international residency programme designed to support the research and development of new work in print by artists from Scotland, Australia, Canada, India and Pakistan. The exhibition includes new prints, produced by Hopkins and Rhodes in 2013 and 2014 at Edinburgh Printmakers, alongside new and related work by the artists in other media.

Below another sky is the first collaborative programme developed by the Scottish Print Network, a partnership between Dundee Contemporary Arts, Edinburgh Printmakers, Glasgow Print Studio, Highland Print Studio, Inverness and Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen.





10 artists from Scotland and 10 from Commonwealth countries were invited to undertake research residencies during 2013 and 2014.

Below another sky takes its name from the poem ‘Travel’, published in 1865 by the Edinburgh-born author Robert Louis Stevenson. Travel – both actual and imaginary – was central to Stevenson’s work and his final years were spent on a Samoan island, now a member of the Commonwealth.

Hopkins and Rhodes were invited to take part in Below another sky because of their individual concerns with landscape, topography and travel. They were invited to show together at Edinburgh Printmakers as an opportunity to explore the ways in which these concerns are expressed and made visible in their practices. This is the first time the artists have presented a two-person exhibition together in the UK.

The artists approached the residency programme in very different ways. Carol Rhodes used the opportunity to revisit Bengal in India, where she grew up. This country has had a lasting impact upon her work: its topography, the juxtaposition of industrial and post-industrial landscapes and the tradition of Indian miniature painting are all important to her. However, her aim here was not to produce work that literally describes or represents particular locations; rather her interest lies in ideas of distance, both literal and psychological.


Fundamentally, Rhodes’ process is usually one of repeated erasure and revision within a single layer of paint. She has stated that, during her time working with Edinburgh Printmakers, the different restrictions and disciplines of printmaking have opened up a range of other qualities and potentials for her practice.




As with Rhodes, Louise Hopkins’ work resists the representation of a specific, actual place; instead she aims to create imagined and new places through the formal process of making the work. Hopkins was unable to travel internationally in 2013 and instead used the opportunity presented by Below another sky to find further ways of using painting, drawing and printmaking to explore what travel can mean within the studio. She has spoken of her desire to understand travel in its relation to the fundamental process of picture making - as a movement across and into a surface.

Hopkins invited other artists participating in this programme to send her objects from their home countries or residency destinations. She then used this material – specifically the forms, colours and patterns of a number of ceramic bowls and textiles – as the starting point for a new body of work. This work has been developed in direct response to conditions of real and imagined travel, exploring other places from a distance and thereby offering an alternative route to discover – or rediscover – our sense of proximity with the world.

For more information please visit http://www.edinburghprintmakers.co.uk/exhibitions/scottish-print-network

For more information on 'Below Another Sky' visit 

http://belowanothersky.org

and the blog

http://below-another-sky.tumblr.com

Clive Hodgson - signed paintings at 42 Carlton Place

 Another wonderful exhibition at 42 Carlton Place. The paintings, all unframed are simply hung on the wall with pins or resting on nails. This simplicity is matched in the work. Hodgson uses subtle colours, often created through the layering of different shades. These are revealed when Hodgson signs and dates his work, often removing the top layer of paint to show what lies beneath.

Clive Hodgson’s paintings can be lyrical, disarming or mordant. They evoke emblem, signage and diagram.

Becoming known in the 1980s for anecdotal figuration, he has moved through alternations and combinations of abstraction and representation, deploying varied technical means: geometric pattern; stenciling; apparently casual daubing; stipple and spatter; ornamental calligraphic design. His diverse strategies build to a concerted interrogation of the puzzles of art and life.

The current exhibition is largely of recent work in which the signing (and dating) of the paintings is a significant part of imagery and content.

Clive Hodgson was born in Nottingham in 1953. He studied at St. Martin’s School of Art 1971-72 and the Slade School of Art 1972-77. He had a residency at The British School at Rome in 1998. Recent exhibitions have included: 2005 ‘Incorrigible, Sentimental’, Filles du Calvaire Brussels; 2006 Terrace London; 2008 ‘False Friends’, Five Years London; 2012 Broadbent London; ‘ Ever Since I Put Your Picture in a Frame’, 42 Carlton Place Glasgow; ‘The Smallest Composite Number’, Standpoint London.