PHOENIX GALLERY

PHOENIX GALLERY

LARA VIANA

12 Jun–19 Jul

Exeter Phoenix Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition by Lara Viana which is accompanied by a new essay written specifically for this exhibition by critic and writer Rebecca Geldard. (Extracts below)

"Viana was born in Salvador, Brazil but has spent the past 25 years living in the UK. While one wouldn’t necessarily guess this from the images she creates, certain recurring themes and motifs lead one on migratory trails across cultures and through art history. There may be a presiding sense of old world architectural and painterly romance about Viana’s compositions, but her carefully controlled palette and smeary scenographic direction pitch one between places and states: heat and cold, light and dark, figuration and abstraction, making and thinking and the different narrative perspectives of subject, witness and voyeur; then and now

…one does not need autobiographical specifics to experience the sense of dislocation she creates. Of course one wonders how much of her personal story Viana has written into these scenes, but it’s her means of fusing appropriated imagery, techniques and data pulled from memory that keeps one shuffling back and forth between the many layers of these ghostly simulacra.

The past, or the idea of remembered time, becomes substance in Viana’s hand – the evocative whiff of yesteryear a tool for engaging the viewer with and distancing one from the painted subject".

Viana studied at both Falmouth School of Art & the Royal College of Art and is base in London where she is represented by DOMOBAAL gallery. She will also be exhibiting in East End Academy: The Painting Edition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London from
9 Jul–20 Sep 2009.

Click here to download Rebecca Geldard’s essay on Lara Viana.

EYEOPENER

Wed 1 Jul/10.45am/FREE but tickets must be booked in advance

Find out about the current exhibition through a sociable half hour talk in the galleries.

ARTIST’S TALK

Sat 18 Jul/2.30pm/FREE/Tickets must be booked in advance.

Lara Viana will take part in an informal discussion about her work.

PHOENIX GALLERY

RICHARD FINN:
COMMERCE & CULTURE

31 Jul- 2 Sep

Commerce & Culture, is a series of works that looks towards addressing our interrelated life experiences – from work, leisure, citizenship, class structure, industry and urban environments, to imagination and the need for creativity. Six large format images developed from the key words – think, watch, listen, dream, work & create have been constructed with techniques ranging from purely digital to heavily worked traditional collage, juxtaposing imagery and meanings to build a complex picture of related issues. This body of work is presented alongside an installation which invites the viewer into a more literal understanding of the artist’s interests in archiving, filing systems & collections, which form the foundation of this exhibition.

PHOENIX GALLERY

JULIET ROBSON:
FIELDWORKS

31 Jul- 2 Sep

Artworks are often said to be hung at eye-level and their dimensions made in response to, and compared with ‘human scale’, a one size fits all, collective approach which is not applicable to the individual – Who’s human scale? Who’s eye-level? Developed through PHD research undertaken at Dartington College of Arts, and taking cues from seminal art works of the 1960s and 70s which are concerned with how objects are positioned in space and our bodily response to them, Juliet will make new works in the gallery space and invite visitors to collaborate in their construction. By utilising the diverse range of physicalities and individual fields of vision including those of children, wheelchair users and adults, she will explore what is revealed about how we, as individuals, negotiate space and perceive our environment.