Joy Revision
Angela De La Cruz | Sarah Pickstone | Andrea Ruthi | Anne Ryan | Stephen Snoddy
Galerie Simpson, 222 High St, Swansea, SA1 1NW
4th Aug - 29 Sept
Galerie Simpson brings together five important contemporary painters to Swansea.
At first glance, Angela de la Cruz’s paintings appear to have been vandalized or flagrantly abused. Mangled stretchers, slashed canvases, twisted and violated, are hung on the wall like macabre trophies, and yet it is this deliberate and systematic desecration of the canvases, which informs the end result. Emotionally raw, yet canny and sharply ironic, De la Cruz confronts the ‘problem’ with painting by incorporating its very destruction into the work itself.
Manchester born Sarah Pickstone won the first prize in the John Moores Painting Prize 2012 with her painting Stevie Smith and The Willow, and was also a runner up for the prize in 2004. She won the Rome scholarship in Painting and spent a year at the British School at Rome. The Royal Academy of Arts has commissioned Allegory of Painting: two large scale paintings for the entrance of Burlington House, as part of RA 250, which will go on display in September 2018.
The paintings of Andreas Rüthi celebrate the hallucinogenic power of colour. They investigate new possibilities held within the tradition of painting: playing with the nature of reproduction, imitation, re-presentation and scale.
The inspiration for these paintings range from found old colour lithographs, to photographs taken by his wife, artist Helen Sear. The intention to extend the potential held within a reproduction through the act of gesture and reinterpretation is the uniting element across all the works.
Anne Ryan ‘cut outs’ are loose and playful, they are about letting the painting come to life and break free from the stretcher.
Her ceramics explore similar themes in a similarly open and painterly way. Using a new medium such as ceramics is interesting as an artist can come to it unaware of the conventions and rules. A whole new way of working and thinking through making becomes suddenly possible.
Stephen Snoddy wants viewers to look at the relationships between his works, and how he carries lines and formats from one picture over to another. He sometimes regards two consecutive paintings as a diptych, with left and right-hand panels forming parts of a composite whole. There is an obsessive commitment to playing out endless permutations of specific forms and he goes along with an ontological methodology. The work becomes defined by its geometries, serial approach and limitless variations.
‘The paintings often come in a small series and incorporate architectural and geometric structures with colour to get everything right – space, line, form. The final result is a balanced resolution made through corrections, revisions and re-workings that show a mixture of judgement through the intrinsic process of making. I both pay attention and call attention to the means and alertness of the language of painting and in particular in ‘Homage’ the paintings of Henri Matisse from 1913 -17.’
www.galeriesimpson.com
Angela De La Cruz | Sarah Pickstone | Andrea Ruthi | Anne Ryan | Stephen Snoddy
Galerie Simpson, 222 High St, Swansea, SA1 1NW
4th Aug - 29 Sept
Galerie Simpson brings together five important contemporary painters to Swansea.
At first glance, Angela de la Cruz’s paintings appear to have been vandalized or flagrantly abused. Mangled stretchers, slashed canvases, twisted and violated, are hung on the wall like macabre trophies, and yet it is this deliberate and systematic desecration of the canvases, which informs the end result. Emotionally raw, yet canny and sharply ironic, De la Cruz confronts the ‘problem’ with painting by incorporating its very destruction into the work itself.
Manchester born Sarah Pickstone won the first prize in the John Moores Painting Prize 2012 with her painting Stevie Smith and The Willow, and was also a runner up for the prize in 2004. She won the Rome scholarship in Painting and spent a year at the British School at Rome. The Royal Academy of Arts has commissioned Allegory of Painting: two large scale paintings for the entrance of Burlington House, as part of RA 250, which will go on display in September 2018.
The paintings of Andreas Rüthi celebrate the hallucinogenic power of colour. They investigate new possibilities held within the tradition of painting: playing with the nature of reproduction, imitation, re-presentation and scale.
The inspiration for these paintings range from found old colour lithographs, to photographs taken by his wife, artist Helen Sear. The intention to extend the potential held within a reproduction through the act of gesture and reinterpretation is the uniting element across all the works.
Anne Ryan ‘cut outs’ are loose and playful, they are about letting the painting come to life and break free from the stretcher.
Her ceramics explore similar themes in a similarly open and painterly way. Using a new medium such as ceramics is interesting as an artist can come to it unaware of the conventions and rules. A whole new way of working and thinking through making becomes suddenly possible.
Stephen Snoddy wants viewers to look at the relationships between his works, and how he carries lines and formats from one picture over to another. He sometimes regards two consecutive paintings as a diptych, with left and right-hand panels forming parts of a composite whole. There is an obsessive commitment to playing out endless permutations of specific forms and he goes along with an ontological methodology. The work becomes defined by its geometries, serial approach and limitless variations.
‘The paintings often come in a small series and incorporate architectural and geometric structures with colour to get everything right – space, line, form. The final result is a balanced resolution made through corrections, revisions and re-workings that show a mixture of judgement through the intrinsic process of making. I both pay attention and call attention to the means and alertness of the language of painting and in particular in ‘Homage’ the paintings of Henri Matisse from 1913 -17.’
www.galeriesimpson.com
