Welcome
Our exhibition was held in early March and had to be reduced due to coronavirus so we decided to present it here for all to enjoy online. Please scroll through this timeline to discover all of the amazing artwork from the main exhibition and find out more about the artists. You can also enjoy videos of the performances on a separate page.
Expect to experience film, fine art, installations performances and soundscapes from an array of emerging artists.
Curator's Intro
The works in this exhibition explore either a physical process that benefits the artist, a personal subject matter or a combination of the two. I am glad to have given a range of artists the opportunity to share their work and experiences around the notion of creative release.
The exhibition is book-ended with two works by me (a film and installation) which I hope will ground the experience and give some insight in to what the theme means to me.
- Amber Bardell
room 1
Amber Bardell
(2019)
Art as Catharsis
Documentary Film
30-minutes runtime
Click on the image to lead you to the Film's website where you can watch it.
Exploring the positive effects of art through a range of people in their lives, the film's multi-media aesthetic combines animation and stylised scenes which act as a cathartic expression for the performative director.
‘Bardell doesn’t need to probe too hard for us to see just how imperative art and creativity has been on these people’s lives, whether they have suffered from trauma or not’
- Steph Green on Art as Catharsis, for Screen Queens
room 2
Jacob Watkinson
(2019-20)
Various
Charcoal and Pencil Drawings
& Air Dry Clay forms
My work stems from a general sense of anxiety from the world and life, most of these drawings were completed as much-needed catharsis whilst working on my most recent short film. I usually start a drawing with no idea where it’ll end up, allowing it to be more of an exercise in free association, allowing my subconscious to deliver whatever images and motifs feel right. Whenever I feel a loss of control in my life I can focus my attention into a piece and bring it to fruition, it’s a deeply meditative and personal process once you get into it. As a filmmaker, I’ve learned it’s essential to undertake smaller and more intimate projects that you can do alone without collaboration and huge expenditure of effort, at least not in the same form. If I’m honest, I’ve never really thought about it this deeply, I just like zoning out and seeing what happens.
Elaoise Benson
(2020)
Mothers and Daughters
Acrylic on dresses,
tights, clothes hangers
This work explores the personal experience of mental health within families. Each dress depicts a different woman in my family (my grandmother, aunt, and mother), all of whom have experienced/continue to suffer with poor mental health such as depression, seasonal affected disorder or menopausal anxiety. Despite this being a continued struggle for each of them, these women represent the core of my family life, a matriarchy by which I have been raised, nurtured and encouraged. This work, therefore, celebrates these powerful female figures, who find their strength through their care for one another.
https://www.instagram.com/ebenson_art/
ebensonart.co.uk
‘Being Human’ was my task for this piece, granting me the opportunity to configure my understanding of the body and imposed spirit within my current zeitgeist. The emphasis of the body influenced my core intuition - I wished to explore the wholeness of being cased in skin both physically and metaphysically, two factors I believe that I could reflect in the focused yet unfocused haze of charcoal.
To encompass a human is to step into documenting the current, thus the piece inevitably became a practice of therapeutic release from the physical and creative inertia I was experiencing. This led me into a purgatory state, a self-caved departure from a collective sense of association - almost a mental waiting room. The process of creating this piece became my internal sail, with its completion being the conclusive light. I began interacting with my world transfixed within a state of complete disassociation as if interacting with it as an effigy. Despite this disassociation, this in some ways enabled me to look past my own form and work above myself. The subject and core of this piece was a release from all constraints, to view the human form as a fabric of transcendent matter.
Charles Jimenez
(2019)
'The' as in Limbs and Faces
A1 print of Charcoal on paper (from Four A3 pages sellotaped together)
Main Gallery
Multiple artists
Click on a name to see the description
& more pictures of each artwork
Shivani Khoshia
(2020)
Growing Pains
The Bather
Light House
These 3 works take a look at different aspects of memory in relation to wellbeing. Growing Pains compares memory retrieval to a kind of excavation site, where we can carefully exhume 'treasure' out of chaotic or difficult experiences.
The Bather is a map or visual diary of a self-care ritual involving bathing, aromatherapy and guided meditations. It is a way of honouring the intimate routines that create lasting calm and expansion in our lives.
Light House takes the lessons learnt from revisiting memories and erects a memorial out of it. Those found 'treasures' are used to create a kind of internal 'lighthouse,' something more lasting to rely on for hope and guidance.
Three multimedia artworks ( Acrylic, plaster, wood, fabric and mixed media, each piece mounted on fabric, approx 250 x 130 cm)
Close up of 'The Bather' pictured above
Djenaba Davis-Eyo
(2019-20)
Temples of Healing
Ink and pastels on recycled fabrics,
Photographic prints of 35mm shots
& Soundscape
Find Djenaba's striking performance of her soundscape on the performances page!
A part of an ongoing project exploring the structure of trees physically, metaphysically, emotionally and spiritually. This part, in particular, focuses on the healing benefits of trees. I have been exploring these omnipotent creatures for some time and here I am attempting to translate the wisdom that I have collected into photography, art and a soundscape. When interacting with their presence, there is an overwhelming energy that fills me with a sense of peace and nostalgia. Suddenly, this wave alleviates any pain, anxiety or depression that was previously washed over me. In these pieces, I am trying to transfer that sensation onto you.
Millie Norman
(2019)
Various
Collage series from 1970s porn magazines,
1950s-1980s National Geographics,
early 2000s palmistry and occult books.
I created these analogue collages from vintage magazines, monographs and travel guides. The series has given me a way through which I can explore the relationship between sex and power through visual puns and humour. It has been healing to poke fun at the patriarchal power structures that, as a queer woman and a victim of sexual abuse, have starkly impacted my life. Though humour is at the core of my collages, I disjoint and separate body parts to highlight the depersonalising aspects of sexual PTSD; I play with the visuals of discovery and churches to demonstrate that the sexual rhetoric of patriarchy operates in a similar way to national and religious power structures. Collaging has given me a way to mock these structures, allowing me to reclaim them-in the same way I reclaim the pictures I use.
All pieces shown in the exhibition and more can be found on Millie's instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mnormart/
Caylan Hallows
(2020)
Conversation, Rest + Play
approx A3, scrap wood,
wingnuts, cotton canvas, ink, 2020
Close-up of test print
“Conversation, rest + play” focuses on finding wellbeing in a simple, minimal life. Using the architecture of Nagakin tower in Tokyo as a basis, the image is mostly geometric with small quirks in the typography and faces adding a fun element to the otherwise focused and structural style. The hope is to create feelings of comfortable clear mindfulness along with a sense of fun and playfulness. Whilst the image portrays what I see as a comfortable, mindful life for myself the process of printing and creating the frame highlights the catharsis I find in creating physical tactile objects. The fabric has been chosen for its texture and crisp natural feeling and the frame has been created using scrap wood and wing nuts to clamp the image in place. The overall result combines all things that I find cathartic and mindful of creating art: balanced, clear and functional with elements of fun.
The Meditative Drawing Space
The Meditative Drawing Space
Amber Bardell (2020)
The Meditative Drawing space
Installation/crowdsourced artwork
Opening up an area to invite exhibition-goers to express themselves, the Meditative Drawing Space encourages people to contribute to an abstract array of artwork whilst reflecting on their experience in the gallery.
WELCOME Please come and relax, draw, contemplate.
Try to draw as meditation, make marks without a care. Use this space to reflect on and respond to the work that you have experienced or whatever is on your mind and find some release. There are no rules or expectations. This space is an iteration of the exhibition’s title Draw + r e l e a s e which evokes cyclical imagery and the idea of drawing breath, releasing marks on to paper. The term ‘draw’ can be viewed with two definitions in this context: to produce a picture or diagram with lines, or pull, take, move something. Have fun whilst drawing and hopefully this will help you unwind...
This soundscape attempts to reflect the vastness and river-like flow of the mind and consciousness, with its constant state of movement between calmness and turbulence. The piece has woven into it a range of known methods that I have used in attempts to still the constant flow of the mind – the vibrations of Tibetan singing bowls that can induce deep meditative states, as can the vibrations that the ‘OM’ throat chant produces. The gentle folding of paper can also be heard throughout, which is a sound that reminds me of the flow state that the practice of origami, or any other artistic practice, can pull you into. But perhaps the most powerful effect on consciousness is sound itself.
Amber Bardell
(2017)
Chair for Mum
Acrylic paint on second-hand canvas chair
Inspired by the garden of my childhood home, the chair's design features key plants that I remember from growing up. I painted this outside in the garden during a summer when my parents were planning to move house, I had never moved before and was headed to university soon as well. The chair now acts as an aide-memoire connecting us to a cherished place and was also a step in the progression of my artistic capabilities, drawing inspiration from Matisse, a long-held reference.