Good morning, Midnight!
I’m coming home,
Day got tired of me –
How could I of him?
Sunshine was a sweet place,
I liked to stay –
But Morn didn’t want me – now –
So good night, Day!
The title of this exhibition is a quote from an Emily Dickinson poem and is inspired by the Jean Rhys novel of the same name. The novel is about a middle-aged English woman returning to Paris after a long absence. She drinks, obsesses over her appearance, and drifts through the city she loves feeling lonely, vulnerable and depressed.
‘My paintings are about the experiences of women – most of my paintings are of women in a scene. It’s the hidden thoughts and the psychology of the situation that interests me most. I use pattern and light to transform the ordinary, tangible objects into pliable masses and squiggles. Sometimes these dynamic patterns and shapes take centre stage, leaving a stationary, solitary protagonist seeming distant, bored, trapped or lost. I am excited by light and colour, which paint serves best, and love how the playfulness of this can, paradoxically, add a sort of melancholy to the thing it’s depicting. Sometimes I’ll confront the viewer with enigmatic behaviours (there’s always something private and inaccessible about the subjects); and at other times I’ll use rituals, symbols and tokens to disrupt the reading of the image. It’s not a radical effect: more a gentle skewing. Sometimes it’s the slightest gesture that feels most significant’.
Ruth Murray (b.1984, Birmingham, UK) graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2008, where she was awarded the Stanley Smith Scholarship to study and the Sheldon Bergh Award for her final show. In her graduation year she also won the De Laszlo Prize for Portraiture and the Boundary Gallery Figurative Art Prize. Following this she was Derek Hill Scholar at the British School at Rome and artist-in-residence at Glogauair (Berlin), Pro Artibus (Finland), Kaus Australis (Rotterdam) and USF (Bergen). That year she had a solo exhibition ‘Keruffle’ at the North Wall Art Gallery, Oxford, was selected for the Threadneedle Figurative Art Prize, and was awarded the Surgeon’s Prize whilst exhibiting at the RBA Annual exhibition. Other notable exhibitions include Peoples prize winner at Beep Painting Prize 2014, Northern Stars at the A Foundation, Saatchi’s 4 New Sensations, The Creative Cities Collection, Beep Painting Prize 2018 and the BP Portrait Award.
www.ruthmurray.com
I’m coming home,
Day got tired of me –
How could I of him?
Sunshine was a sweet place,
I liked to stay –
But Morn didn’t want me – now –
So good night, Day!
The title of this exhibition is a quote from an Emily Dickinson poem and is inspired by the Jean Rhys novel of the same name. The novel is about a middle-aged English woman returning to Paris after a long absence. She drinks, obsesses over her appearance, and drifts through the city she loves feeling lonely, vulnerable and depressed.
‘My paintings are about the experiences of women – most of my paintings are of women in a scene. It’s the hidden thoughts and the psychology of the situation that interests me most. I use pattern and light to transform the ordinary, tangible objects into pliable masses and squiggles. Sometimes these dynamic patterns and shapes take centre stage, leaving a stationary, solitary protagonist seeming distant, bored, trapped or lost. I am excited by light and colour, which paint serves best, and love how the playfulness of this can, paradoxically, add a sort of melancholy to the thing it’s depicting. Sometimes I’ll confront the viewer with enigmatic behaviours (there’s always something private and inaccessible about the subjects); and at other times I’ll use rituals, symbols and tokens to disrupt the reading of the image. It’s not a radical effect: more a gentle skewing. Sometimes it’s the slightest gesture that feels most significant’.
Ruth Murray (b.1984, Birmingham, UK) graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2008, where she was awarded the Stanley Smith Scholarship to study and the Sheldon Bergh Award for her final show. In her graduation year she also won the De Laszlo Prize for Portraiture and the Boundary Gallery Figurative Art Prize. Following this she was Derek Hill Scholar at the British School at Rome and artist-in-residence at Glogauair (Berlin), Pro Artibus (Finland), Kaus Australis (Rotterdam) and USF (Bergen). That year she had a solo exhibition ‘Keruffle’ at the North Wall Art Gallery, Oxford, was selected for the Threadneedle Figurative Art Prize, and was awarded the Surgeon’s Prize whilst exhibiting at the RBA Annual exhibition. Other notable exhibitions include Peoples prize winner at Beep Painting Prize 2014, Northern Stars at the A Foundation, Saatchi’s 4 New Sensations, The Creative Cities Collection, Beep Painting Prize 2018 and the BP Portrait Award.
www.ruthmurray.com
This exhibition brings together two painters with completely different approaches to their practice. Equilibrio will be creating a balanced tension and conversation between artists arriving from vastly different standpoints.
Jason Gregory’s recent paintings elicit an unsettled relationship with landscape and place, a fascination with the disconnect of border zones, abandoned objects, and a curiosity of foreign spaces.
Through hasty representation, paintings are created through empathetic experience and memory of places visited. Subjects extend into fictional compositions, which include references to local landscapes, a focal point for his painterly exploration. Jason’s paintings engage the viewer in the emotional, psychological states that landscape can inspirit, through which romantic and anxious tensions are discussed.
Situated between the mundane and mystical, a strange beauty is at the heart of Jason’s painting
Kelly Ewing is a recent graduate from Belfast School of Art, whose work is primarily concerned with painting and soft sculpture. Through Ewing’s practice, she navigates themes of abjection and the monstrous feminine, seeking to examine the relationship between the prior and the role they inhabit in forming the archetype of the ‘monstrous woman’ or ‘femme castratrice’. Her practice takes the form of painting, sculpture and installation, the main objective of which is to produce objects which inspire feelings of bodily horror and abjection, whilst subverting the viewers understanding of the materiality and origins of the imagery being presented to them. Viewing painting as a performative three-dimensional activity allows for a painterly approach to objective sculpture and installation.
Jason Gregory is from Tonypandy, South Wales whilst Kelly Ewing is from Co. Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Both were the joint winners of the 2018 Beep Painting Prize.
www.kellyewingartist.co.uk
www.jgregorypainting.com
Jason Gregory’s recent paintings elicit an unsettled relationship with landscape and place, a fascination with the disconnect of border zones, abandoned objects, and a curiosity of foreign spaces.
Through hasty representation, paintings are created through empathetic experience and memory of places visited. Subjects extend into fictional compositions, which include references to local landscapes, a focal point for his painterly exploration. Jason’s paintings engage the viewer in the emotional, psychological states that landscape can inspirit, through which romantic and anxious tensions are discussed.
Situated between the mundane and mystical, a strange beauty is at the heart of Jason’s painting
Kelly Ewing is a recent graduate from Belfast School of Art, whose work is primarily concerned with painting and soft sculpture. Through Ewing’s practice, she navigates themes of abjection and the monstrous feminine, seeking to examine the relationship between the prior and the role they inhabit in forming the archetype of the ‘monstrous woman’ or ‘femme castratrice’. Her practice takes the form of painting, sculpture and installation, the main objective of which is to produce objects which inspire feelings of bodily horror and abjection, whilst subverting the viewers understanding of the materiality and origins of the imagery being presented to them. Viewing painting as a performative three-dimensional activity allows for a painterly approach to objective sculpture and installation.
Jason Gregory is from Tonypandy, South Wales whilst Kelly Ewing is from Co. Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Both were the joint winners of the 2018 Beep Painting Prize.
www.kellyewingartist.co.uk
www.jgregorypainting.com
MATTER is a response to the Icelandic landscape and its inherent monochromatic beauty. The lilac, white snow and black sand were a tangible form of the paintings the artist aspired to create.
‘The abstract black flecks and dots on translucent ground that I had been painting in my studio were realised in the strange, almost sci-fi landscape. MATTER is also an emotional response to the medium of paint; the sticky viscosity and watery oils vying for attention as I strive to capture Beauty. Living in Wales is also important. Witnessing nature, the scars in the landscape, the erosion and the routine of nature is a key source of inspiration.
I work in oil because of the translucency of the medium; the way it takes an age to dry and the way in which it surprises me. I gravitate towards canvas because I love the inherent texture of the surface and the way in which it responds to the pressure of a paintbrush. I often use a restricted palette, relying on slight differences in tone and paint application to create depth and layers. Working with oil allows me to respond intuitively to the marks that I make and scratch and blur the wet surface with graphite; a central element of my practice.
I am fascinated by the fragility of the human condition and the notion of Memory; the way it changes, fades and resurfaces over time. My ideas are firmly rooted in this concept, evidenced in the layering and reworking of MATTER. My intuitive response and the application and destruction of the surface mimics the concept of memory. I am fascinated by how memories metamorphosis and how we create complex personal fictions’.
Helen Booth studied Fine Art Painting at Wimbledon School of Art and graduated in 1989. She has exhibited extensively throughout the UK and Europe. In April 2019, she was awarded two prestigious New York awards – A Pollock Krasner award for painting and an Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Prize for Abstract Painting. Booth won the Glynn Vivian Prize for Welsh Painting at BEEP International Painting Prize 2018.
www.helenbooth.com
‘The abstract black flecks and dots on translucent ground that I had been painting in my studio were realised in the strange, almost sci-fi landscape. MATTER is also an emotional response to the medium of paint; the sticky viscosity and watery oils vying for attention as I strive to capture Beauty. Living in Wales is also important. Witnessing nature, the scars in the landscape, the erosion and the routine of nature is a key source of inspiration.
I work in oil because of the translucency of the medium; the way it takes an age to dry and the way in which it surprises me. I gravitate towards canvas because I love the inherent texture of the surface and the way in which it responds to the pressure of a paintbrush. I often use a restricted palette, relying on slight differences in tone and paint application to create depth and layers. Working with oil allows me to respond intuitively to the marks that I make and scratch and blur the wet surface with graphite; a central element of my practice.
I am fascinated by the fragility of the human condition and the notion of Memory; the way it changes, fades and resurfaces over time. My ideas are firmly rooted in this concept, evidenced in the layering and reworking of MATTER. My intuitive response and the application and destruction of the surface mimics the concept of memory. I am fascinated by how memories metamorphosis and how we create complex personal fictions’.
Helen Booth studied Fine Art Painting at Wimbledon School of Art and graduated in 1989. She has exhibited extensively throughout the UK and Europe. In April 2019, she was awarded two prestigious New York awards – A Pollock Krasner award for painting and an Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Prize for Abstract Painting. Booth won the Glynn Vivian Prize for Welsh Painting at BEEP International Painting Prize 2018.
www.helenbooth.com
