Review of Brush It In at Flowers Kingsland Road

27/11/12

Brush It In

Group Show curated by Lorenzo Durantini

Flowers, 82 Kingsland Road

26 October – 22 December 2012 (extended run)

The title is both the key to and the stumbling block of this group exhibition, curated by Lorenzo Durantini, currently on show at Flowers, Kingsland Road. “Brush it in” is a colloquial expression for a wide variety of post-production alterations which can be carried out on digital photographs, but it is perhaps somewhat misleading given that most of the works in this show have not actually been manipulated post-production at all. Rather, they explore and exploit the realms of what would or could be done using Photoshop or other similar techniques, instigating, in the words of Durantini, “the beginnings of a post-Photoshop engagement with photography, [whereby] photographic manipulation as a physical wet process becomes digital and immaterial only to be re-materialised as physical and sculptural interventions.”

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/2012/11/brush-it-in-2/

Profile about Music and Liberation

22/11/12

She Rocks!

Although describing herself primarily as a researcher, Deborah Withers is also an artist, curator, musician, publisher and writer who sees herself as existing between different worlds: “I enjoy doing things which are hands on and practical, like publishing and making exhibitions. Communicating research to wider audiences is very important to me.” With a PhD about the work of Kate Bush, music has always been an important part of her life, and Withers has played instruments and written songs since she was a teenager. She now plays in a band called bellies!, together with her girlfriend, Natalie. 

To read the rest of this article, please buy the December 2012 issue of Diva magazine

Anna Dickinson: Art, not Craft

18/11/12

Anna Dickinson: Art, not Craft

Von Bartha Quarterly Report, 4/12

Before I went to meet Anna Dickinson in her spacious Dulwich studio the other week, I have to confess to having little knowledge of the intricate processes involved in glass artistry. I also had a fairly fixed image of what the works must look like: perhaps something a little chintzy, or kitsch, or exaggeratedly flamboyant like Dale Chihuly’s Rotunda chandelier at the V&A. But this is not Dickinson’s style at all. Firmly rooted in the ethos of art, not craft, her largely monotone vessels may be devoid of function, but certainly not of feeling. She described her methods and inspirations to me with a contagious enthusiasm, explaining at the outset: “I just love making things, and I’ve always really liked vessels, right from the beginning. I think it’s because they are very approachable. There’s nothing scary about a vessel. Everyone understands a vessel, and yet they’re quite intriguing as well.”

Image © the artist

To read the rest of this feature, please go to pp.10-11 of Von Bartha Quarterly Review 4/12

Review of Hannah Brown: The Unseen Landscape at Payne Shurvell

06/11/12

Hannah Brown: The Unseen Landscape

Payne Shurvell

5 October – 17 November 2012

“I have never understood why more women did not paint landscape,” bemoaned Germaine Greer in The Guardian a couple of years ago.^[1] Indeed, despite the number of Victorian women who ventured out to make sketches in pencil and watercolour, very few turned these into finished works. Hannah Brown (born 1977) is a contemporary exception. Her current exhibition, her second solo show since graduating with an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art in 2006, contains a carefully hung selection of ten small-scale landscapes, oil on plywood and oak, waxed rather than varnished, and each one “typically English”. 

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.divamag.co.uk/category/arts-entertainment/art-review-hannah-brown.aspx

Artist Profile: Aura Satz

01/11/12

Artist Profile: Aura Satz

Artist Aura Satz works across various media, including film, sound, performance and sculpture, with a particular interest in sound visualisation. During 2009-2010 she was artist-in-residence at the Ear Institute, UCL, where she was able to collaborate, amongst others, with neuroscientists and scientists studying acoustics and hearing. This autumn, she performed at Tate Modern’s new live performance space, the Tanks.

To read the rest of this profile, please go to: http://www.divamag.co.uk/category/arts-entertainment/profile-artist-aura-satz.aspx