Canwood Gallery are delighted to announce our Turbine Hall August exhibition:- In the Middle of Somewhere
4th – 31st August 2018
Tuesday to Sunday 11am – 4pm
In the Middle of Somewhere was conceived by eight Herefordshire artists, most of whom met at Hereford College of Art over 10 years ago, together with two ‘Cartographers’- recently graduated from the Royal college of Art in London. As a group who continue to support one-another creatively beyond college, this exhibition is a channel for discussing our perspectives around the momentous importance of art as a fundamental life tool- a vital means of expressing one’s individual political voice, and of working through personal everyday obstacles, whilst making sense of some of the universal realities of the age in which we live.
In the Middle of Somewhere.
‘A small disparate group find themselves lost‘In the middle of somewhere’.
Making the best of it, they create things to help themselves not think too much about missing home.
One day they happen upon a passing cartographer, who they ask to draft a map to help them find their way back.
Xe agrees, explaining that there are many ways back and that they must all work together – as it’s only possible to map out the various spaces they perceive between themselves and each of the group members, via the objects they’ve created (since there’s nothing else to go on).
All are cartographers in the end.
Besides Xe says, mapmaking also helps a cartographer to pass time, since Xe too is lost. Yet a cartographer’s work can be useful to other lost folk.
Being also lost, Xe can’t help them to not be lost, but rather Xe guides them towards mapping their own somewhere’s – where they are, if only for them to just see that they are, at least…
Somewhere (X)’.
Artists
Anita Louise Davies
Anita initially studied at Hereford College of Art (2008-2009) and later continued at the University of Gloucestershire to complete her Fine Art Degree BA Hons in Painting and Drawing (2009-2012)
Her practice explores the beauty and suffering of the world as it is, sometimes drawing attention to matters that seem to shame us all. The work she has created for ‘In the Middle of Somewhere’ is a celebration of Mike; a wonderful correspondent during his last four years on Death Row in Florida. Indicted of first degree murder in 1983. Always maintaining his complete innocence, he was executed October 5th2017.
Recent awards and exhibitions:
2015 163rd Annual Open Exhibition. Royal West of England Academy. Bristol
2014 Visions of Ten. St. Edmunds Church, College Road, Great Malvern.
2014 Dear World (group exhibition).The Weavers Gallery, Ledbury.
2013 Hereford Open Exhibition. Hereford Museum and Art Gallery.
2011 St James House Travel Award
Julia Gardiner
Throughout her life Julia has lived very close to the natural environment. Brought up on a traditional mixed farm, her earliest memories are as witness to the everyday struggle of life, death and regeneration. Later, as wife and mother, she lived on a remote mountain in Mid-Wales, helping to restore a derelict stone house into a comfortable family home, whilst battling with the extremes of the elements. These experiences are the foundation for Julia’s art practice, which has evolved out of her interest in the fragile relationship between the earth’s resources and human identity and survival. Through a process of experimental exploration into material substance, she works with the ancient communion that mankind has with the earth.
In 2011 Julia graduated from Hereford College of Arts with a BA in Fine Art.
Miranda Goudge
Originally a typesetter and Apple Mac Specialist, Miranda later travelled and lived in Sydney, which totally stole her heart. On her return to the UK she moved to Shropshire as a single mother and sought to compliment her occupation with a qualification in the hope of gaining residency in Australia. She enrolled on the Fine Art degree course at Hereford College of Arts as a painter, but soon found an affinity with the found object and storytelling through 3D Assemblage, and never looked back. Working intuitively, she externalises emotions around family and belonging – exploiting etymology to support her personal vocabulary. Deferring her final year after becoming homeless halted the emigration process, but the positivity she found through her art practice was her saving grace, and she graduated with a First Class Honors Degree in 2012.
2011 – HCA Wyevale Book Art Prize winner.
Wendy Healey
At the heart of Wendy’s artistic journey has been experimentation and discovery.
She has become increasingly fascinated with developing expressive figurative and sculptural art through mixed media. Her work explores the essence of being human, our beginnings and endings, what makes us who we are.
Using diverse media she explores our physical and emotional fragilities. She attempts to depict our complex internal and external worlds whilst exposing human vulnerability apparent from birth to death.
Her experience as a Child Psychotherapist informs and influences her work.
She is studying a BA (Hons) Fine Art degree with the Open College of Arts (OCA).
Wendy was shortlisted for the RA Summer Exhibition 2016
and has exhibited in the ‘Open all Media’ Exhibition at the RBSA Gallery Birmingham, 2017.
Caroline Holt-Wilson
Thinking through drawing, Caroline’s practice attempts to articulate a spatial sense of absence, time and movement. Working in various media including print, pencil on paper, 3D and video, she explores her curiosity about what we don’t yet know, what we can’t see, and the space or gaps where this information may be held.
Caroline completed a BA in Fine Art at Hereford College of Art in 2011 and expects to graduate with an MA in Drawing from Wimbledon College of Art this September.
She was selected for the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2017.
Liz Morison
Liz has developed her interests in both sculpture and performance- making films and objects that can be performed with, or that ‘perform’ in the process of being made. Site and materials influence her work.
Liz completed her BA at Hereford College of Arts in 2012 and an MFA in Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Art in 2016. She is part of a critique group and runs an annual artists’ residency at the Sidney Nolan Trust. Recent exhibitions include:
MFA Wimbledon Shots, London, Film Screenings, emerging artists 2018.
Clydach Gorge Collaborative, Abergavenny and Hereford. Poetry, presentations and exhibition. 2018.
MicroActs, London, curated artists film screenings, 2017/18.
Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Open Exhibition 2017.
Dani Sangway
Initially a nurse, a chiropractor and a mother, Dani later trained as a counsellor, before gaining her BA Fine Arts degree at Hereford College in 2012.
Selected Exhibitions:
2011- Winner, Sturgeon Exhibition. Hereford Museum and Art Gallery.
2012 & 2013- Herefordshire Open Exhibition, Hereford Museum and Art Gallery
2014- Fourth Quarter group exhibition, Apple Store Gallery, Hereford.
2016- MA & Other Post Graduates contemporary art show,
Atkinson Gallery, Millfield School, Somerset.
Cartographer/ Curators
Tom Nash
Tom studied his BA in Fine Art at The Slade (2008 – 2012), and his MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art (2012 – 2014). For sixteen years he has been privately working on a map describing his own world. Nonetheless, he considers the audience part of a work, and any opportunity to discuss his art as an exhibition. Tom is currently engaged in a reading project, reading particular books several times, each with a new assumption about the author or a major character, and is angling for funding to study himself in a more scientific capacity.
He teaches and curates in London and across the UK, and also exhibits his work in gallery spaces, sometimes. Selected exhibitions include:
2016 Things on Things, AMP Gallery, London
2015 MK Calling, Milton Keynes Gallery, Milton Keynes
2014 We Designed Chairs, Milton Keynes Arts Centre, Parklands, Milton Keynes
2013 PNTG NOV., Henry Moore Gallery, Royal College of Art, Kensington, London
2012 gym., Emigré Studios, Hackney, London
2011 Each Day We Live Happier, Hatch Space, Deptford
Lexi Strauss
Operating in the capacity of both artist and ‘cartographer’ for ‘In the Middle of Somewhere’, Lexi lives and works between London and the West Midlands, having studied at the Royal College of Art in London (2012- 2014) and at Hereford College of Art (2009-2011).
She often weaves together performance, painting and musical composition to create theatrical installations that allow her paintings to sing or narrate humorously surreal, political/ personal stories. Previous installations have often involved fictional political movements that discuss individuation and complex human relationships with belief systems.
Her most current work, funded by the Arts Council, England, explores the cyclical trauma in her background, connected with the Diaspora.
She teaches in London and at Hereford College of Art and iscurrently engaged with the development of the ‘Ultras’- a new all female artists incentive with Eastside projects.
Selected exhibitions and events include:
Triptych: Global Arts Workshop, (2018) Kiev, Ukraine
New voices, New conversations, Recent acquisitions of the New Hall Art Collection, (2017) Cambridge University.
The Oath of The Great Order of Emancipists. (2016) Birmingham University (Solo)
Radical Sabbatical, (2016) Birmingham University and Eastside Projects (Residency).
Catlin Art Prize, Londonewcastle Project Space, London, (2015)
John Moores Painting Prize, (2014) Walker Gallery, Liverpool
Jerwood Drawing Prize (2014), London and toured venues
Empty Chairs, (2013) The Institute of Art and Ideas, The Globe, Hay on Wye (Solo).
Lexi was also nominated for Saatchi New Sensations (2014) and Shortlisted for New Contemporaries (2013).
www.canwoodgallery.org
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