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Oceans Apart
WINDOWPANE
19th November to 11th December 2022
Windowpane is an exhibition of two bodies of work under one title. Both a solo exhibition by Alex Crocker and a group show of Manchester based painters, curated by Alex, Windowpane brings together paintings by Alex Crocker, Jenny Eden, Linda Hemmersbach, Gregory Howard, Matilda Wainwright and Rachel Wharton.
The exhibition marks the culmination of Alex’s Freelands Painting Fellowship, an opportunity which has enabled Alex to paint and work with students and staff at Manchester School of Art over the last ten months. The title ‘Windowpane’ can be seen as a metaphor for the wider Fellowship, which has created a collegiate atmosphere where conversations and dialogues across studios and between people are embodied in the paintings each artist has made. A Risograph booklet accompanies the exhibition containing an ‘in conversation’ between Alex Crocker and Jenny Eden held in Alex’s studio. The following is an excerpt from this conversation:
AC: The way you walk through the gallery means you enter the upper space first and then you go into the lower space. That transition helped me clarify who I wanted in the upper space because in some ways these paintings are like propositions, offering up questions about what painting can be. If you think about Greg’s paintings, they're often ‘becoming something’. I want there to be different sensibilities in a way. Propositions for different spaces within painting, like an index. But I don't know how much that will crystallise, or maybe I don't want it to. Maybe it's more of a mood or something. And then the whole show has only one title, so it feels like a kind of…
JE: …collective. It’s a bit, dare I say it, revolutionary to have a show of two parts like this. One part is a solo, one is a group, and yet it's all under the same title. Within two distinct spaces. I like that. I mean, I haven’t seen many shows like this in recent times. It feels exciting. As we move through the show, along and into your space, it’s like we navigate a collection of people's work that you’ve been around, or within, discussing all year. We're entering some kind of space of your experience, I think. Before entering your direct experience.
AC: They’re ingredients in a funny way.
JE: Ingredients rather than index.
AC: The conversations with you all and with your work have helped me think about my own work. I’ve been exposed to many different ways of thinking. For example, after speaking to you about your work, it made me think about the idea of psychological spaces and a painting having its own ‘psychology’. This isn't something I'm necessarily directly dealing with myself, but it's enriched the way I think about painting. And then with Rachel's painting I was really interested in the way she uses different painterly spaces.
JE: Interlocking or overlapping.
AC: Indeed. And looking at all this work and my conversations again, and this is not necessarily a direct point, but it's all these…yes, maybe ingredients is a better way of looking at it. Ways of adding to what I’m already doing.
Windowpane opens with a PV on Saturday 19th November, 6-9pm, and continues to 11th December, opening every Saturday, 12-4pm, or by appointment – please email oceansapartgallery@gmail.com or DM on Instagram @oceansapartgallery
19th November to 11th December 2022
Windowpane is an exhibition of two bodies of work under one title. Both a solo exhibition by Alex Crocker and a group show of Manchester based painters, curated by Alex, Windowpane brings together paintings by Alex Crocker, Jenny Eden, Linda Hemmersbach, Gregory Howard, Matilda Wainwright and Rachel Wharton.
The exhibition marks the culmination of Alex’s Freelands Painting Fellowship, an opportunity which has enabled Alex to paint and work with students and staff at Manchester School of Art over the last ten months. The title ‘Windowpane’ can be seen as a metaphor for the wider Fellowship, which has created a collegiate atmosphere where conversations and dialogues across studios and between people are embodied in the paintings each artist has made. A Risograph booklet accompanies the exhibition containing an ‘in conversation’ between Alex Crocker and Jenny Eden held in Alex’s studio. The following is an excerpt from this conversation:
AC: The way you walk through the gallery means you enter the upper space first and then you go into the lower space. That transition helped me clarify who I wanted in the upper space because in some ways these paintings are like propositions, offering up questions about what painting can be. If you think about Greg’s paintings, they're often ‘becoming something’. I want there to be different sensibilities in a way. Propositions for different spaces within painting, like an index. But I don't know how much that will crystallise, or maybe I don't want it to. Maybe it's more of a mood or something. And then the whole show has only one title, so it feels like a kind of…
JE: …collective. It’s a bit, dare I say it, revolutionary to have a show of two parts like this. One part is a solo, one is a group, and yet it's all under the same title. Within two distinct spaces. I like that. I mean, I haven’t seen many shows like this in recent times. It feels exciting. As we move through the show, along and into your space, it’s like we navigate a collection of people's work that you’ve been around, or within, discussing all year. We're entering some kind of space of your experience, I think. Before entering your direct experience.
AC: They’re ingredients in a funny way.
JE: Ingredients rather than index.
AC: The conversations with you all and with your work have helped me think about my own work. I’ve been exposed to many different ways of thinking. For example, after speaking to you about your work, it made me think about the idea of psychological spaces and a painting having its own ‘psychology’. This isn't something I'm necessarily directly dealing with myself, but it's enriched the way I think about painting. And then with Rachel's painting I was really interested in the way she uses different painterly spaces.
JE: Interlocking or overlapping.
AC: Indeed. And looking at all this work and my conversations again, and this is not necessarily a direct point, but it's all these…yes, maybe ingredients is a better way of looking at it. Ways of adding to what I’m already doing.
Windowpane opens with a PV on Saturday 19th November, 6-9pm, and continues to 11th December, opening every Saturday, 12-4pm, or by appointment – please email oceansapartgallery@gmail.com or DM on Instagram @oceansapartgallery
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
20th August to 18th September 2022
FOOD FOR THOUGHT is an exhibition of paintings that engage with consumption, preparation and excess. Deconstructing food into F - O - O - D, this exhibition examines our complex relationship with the stuff we ‘take in’ and the gooey implications of our routes to satisfaction.
Bringing together paintings by Claire Dorsett, Jenny Eden, Brian Mountford and Joe O’Rourke, FOOD FOR THOUGHT appears as a vivid, playful show on the surface, diving deep to examine our dependency on synthetic food and its manufacture, the wicked underbelly of our time. In 'this time’, colour is outrageous and unreal, grubby, dirty or grey, and everyday existence is entangled, bulging with empty promises that are propelling the planet into ultimate disarray.
Like painting, close contact with ingredients of ‘food-ing’ concocts independent agents, configurations and visions, that look back and encourage us (the makers and consumers) to address the hunger we invested at the starting line of production. Excess leads to revolt and these paintings are in the eye of the storm, with their multifarious demonstrations and query-sumptuous references. What may look appetising on the outside could be riddled with complication internally. Lick, slurp, slug – be careful what you wish for.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT has been selected to be a part of A Modest Show. While Manchester hosts the British Art Show 9, A Modest Show will run alongside BAS 9 showcasing Manchester's artists and artist-led venues. From May until September, the programme will deliver 43 new commissions, working with 100 artists, across 27 venues. Focusing on hospitality, dining and food, A Modest Show offers a main course instead of an exhibition, creative food-led events as dessert, a chopping block as a studio, a kitchen as a gallery and restaurants as museums, inviting you to #EATMANCHESTERARTISTS
A Modest Show is funded and supported by Arts Council England and Greater Manchester
Combined Authority. Instagram: @greatermcr @amodestshow @second_act_gallery @aceagrams @division_of_labour
20th August to 18th September 2022
FOOD FOR THOUGHT is an exhibition of paintings that engage with consumption, preparation and excess. Deconstructing food into F - O - O - D, this exhibition examines our complex relationship with the stuff we ‘take in’ and the gooey implications of our routes to satisfaction.
Bringing together paintings by Claire Dorsett, Jenny Eden, Brian Mountford and Joe O’Rourke, FOOD FOR THOUGHT appears as a vivid, playful show on the surface, diving deep to examine our dependency on synthetic food and its manufacture, the wicked underbelly of our time. In 'this time’, colour is outrageous and unreal, grubby, dirty or grey, and everyday existence is entangled, bulging with empty promises that are propelling the planet into ultimate disarray.
Like painting, close contact with ingredients of ‘food-ing’ concocts independent agents, configurations and visions, that look back and encourage us (the makers and consumers) to address the hunger we invested at the starting line of production. Excess leads to revolt and these paintings are in the eye of the storm, with their multifarious demonstrations and query-sumptuous references. What may look appetising on the outside could be riddled with complication internally. Lick, slurp, slug – be careful what you wish for.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT has been selected to be a part of A Modest Show. While Manchester hosts the British Art Show 9, A Modest Show will run alongside BAS 9 showcasing Manchester's artists and artist-led venues. From May until September, the programme will deliver 43 new commissions, working with 100 artists, across 27 venues. Focusing on hospitality, dining and food, A Modest Show offers a main course instead of an exhibition, creative food-led events as dessert, a chopping block as a studio, a kitchen as a gallery and restaurants as museums, inviting you to #EATMANCHESTERARTISTS
A Modest Show is funded and supported by Arts Council England and Greater Manchester
Combined Authority. Instagram: @greatermcr @amodestshow @second_act_gallery @aceagrams @division_of_labour
MUDLARKS II
DAN ROACH & REBECCA SITAR
25th June to 24th July 2022
Mudlarks II features recent paintings by the artists Dan Roach and Rebecca Sitar following a two year collaborative project reflecting on the poignancy of lost objects. Prompted by observations of ‘things’ in the world around them, the artists share a particular kind of pictorial language, where subtle forms of semi-abstraction signal the emergence of something lost, abandoned or obscured by the passage of time.
Alighting on the theme of ‘mudlarking’, a term used to describe the action of digging, searching or playing in muddy ground, Roach and Sitar explore conceptual and poetic resonances between mudlarks’ wanderings and their respective painting practices. Evocative of experiences unearthed from memories as well as spaces, the paintings in this exhibition address the psychological and metaphorical retrieval of ‘long-buried objects’, where mining for the mislaid brings forgotten things to the surface, reimagined, reconfigured and gently seen anew.
“Dan Roach and Rebecca Sitar are artists who wander these visual edge lands; mudlarks seeking treasure, relishing mystery and wonder, teasing with familiarity yet resisting the known. Their works are maps of these shimmering, shifting, sometimes iridescent spaces. Like mudflats, these colour-field surfaces absorb our gaze, often blurring spaces on the edge of vision, sucking us in and holding us suspended in a moment wonder.” – Richard Davey
Mudarks II is a touring exhibition originally shown at the Eagle Gallery EMH Arts, Cabinet Room, London, in December 2021. The exhibition at Oceans Apart brings together previously shown work with new paintings made especially for this iteration.
To accompany the exhibition there is a 42 page catalogue publication which includes seminal works, a forward by Rebecca Sitar and an essay by art writer and curator Richard Davey – please contact rsitar.art@gmail.com or enquire at the gallery for more details.
MUDLARKS II opens on Saturday 25th June and continues to Sunday 24th July, 12-4pm daily by appointment only - please email oceansapartgallery@gmail.com.
There will be a closing PV event on Friday 22nd July from 6 to 9pm.
DAN ROACH & REBECCA SITAR
25th June to 24th July 2022
Mudlarks II features recent paintings by the artists Dan Roach and Rebecca Sitar following a two year collaborative project reflecting on the poignancy of lost objects. Prompted by observations of ‘things’ in the world around them, the artists share a particular kind of pictorial language, where subtle forms of semi-abstraction signal the emergence of something lost, abandoned or obscured by the passage of time.
Alighting on the theme of ‘mudlarking’, a term used to describe the action of digging, searching or playing in muddy ground, Roach and Sitar explore conceptual and poetic resonances between mudlarks’ wanderings and their respective painting practices. Evocative of experiences unearthed from memories as well as spaces, the paintings in this exhibition address the psychological and metaphorical retrieval of ‘long-buried objects’, where mining for the mislaid brings forgotten things to the surface, reimagined, reconfigured and gently seen anew.
“Dan Roach and Rebecca Sitar are artists who wander these visual edge lands; mudlarks seeking treasure, relishing mystery and wonder, teasing with familiarity yet resisting the known. Their works are maps of these shimmering, shifting, sometimes iridescent spaces. Like mudflats, these colour-field surfaces absorb our gaze, often blurring spaces on the edge of vision, sucking us in and holding us suspended in a moment wonder.” – Richard Davey
Mudarks II is a touring exhibition originally shown at the Eagle Gallery EMH Arts, Cabinet Room, London, in December 2021. The exhibition at Oceans Apart brings together previously shown work with new paintings made especially for this iteration.
To accompany the exhibition there is a 42 page catalogue publication which includes seminal works, a forward by Rebecca Sitar and an essay by art writer and curator Richard Davey – please contact rsitar.art@gmail.com or enquire at the gallery for more details.
MUDLARKS II opens on Saturday 25th June and continues to Sunday 24th July, 12-4pm daily by appointment only - please email oceansapartgallery@gmail.com.
There will be a closing PV event on Friday 22nd July from 6 to 9pm.
WALKING IN TWO WORLDS / CERDDED MEWN DAU FYD
9th October to 7th November 2021
“Man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage” - Morris West
Walking in Two Worlds is a group exhibition curated by Welsh painter Jonathan Powell and devised by Steph Goodger and Julian Rowe. It brings together a group of artists who share interests in prehistoric art, the primitive, the shamanistic and the mysterious.
This vision of painted artefacts littering a gallery space is a latter-day reflection on the thrill of encountering a painted cave for the first time, where long-forgotten animals leap out of the flickering shadows. Perhaps for a moment the gallery can become the cave.
The focus of the show is the work of the neglected Dutch French primitive painter Hetty van Kooten (1908-1958), some of whose paintings are included in the exhibition, together with a small display of texts, images and memorabilia concerning her life and work.
Van Kooten spent her working life in France and as a young woman she assisted in documenting the newly discovered prehistoric paintings at the Pech Merle cave in the Lot region of France. It was whilst working underground that she claimed to be receiving inspiration, and even direct instructions, from a higher, mystical, plane, channelling the same energies from the caves that had possessed the prehistoric shamans who had preceded her. Through painting, Van Kooten discovered a physical expression of these energies.
There is something intriguing and seductive about the prehistoric cave sites that preoccupied Van Kooten. Most of the art was created at a time when we humans were not at the top of the food chain. Our connection to the landscape and the surrounding environment helped keep us alive and fed into storytelling and rituals lost to time. We can now only try and pick at the few scraps we have and guess at the mind sets of our long-ago forebears.
The artists in this exhibition offer manifold approaches to their painting practices as they prod and probe, scratch away and paint, looking for meaning in a world far removed from our prehistoric ancestors.
This exhibition is split into two parts: Oceans Apart, Salford, Manchester: 9th Oct – 7th Nov 2021 and Oriel Carn, Caernarfon: 2nd Oct – 14th Nov 2021
Exhibiting artists: Jonathan Anderson, Helen Blake, Philippa Brown, Philip Cheater, Lara Davies, Lucy Donald, Tom Down, Mark Folds, Amy Goldring, Steph Goodger, Gareth Griffith, Paul Hughes, Tim Kelly, Hetty van Kooten, Enzo Marra, James Moore, Sarah Poland, Jonathan Powell, Dylan Williams, Richard Williams, Jessica Woodrow
9th October to 7th November 2021
“Man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage” - Morris West
Walking in Two Worlds is a group exhibition curated by Welsh painter Jonathan Powell and devised by Steph Goodger and Julian Rowe. It brings together a group of artists who share interests in prehistoric art, the primitive, the shamanistic and the mysterious.
This vision of painted artefacts littering a gallery space is a latter-day reflection on the thrill of encountering a painted cave for the first time, where long-forgotten animals leap out of the flickering shadows. Perhaps for a moment the gallery can become the cave.
The focus of the show is the work of the neglected Dutch French primitive painter Hetty van Kooten (1908-1958), some of whose paintings are included in the exhibition, together with a small display of texts, images and memorabilia concerning her life and work.
Van Kooten spent her working life in France and as a young woman she assisted in documenting the newly discovered prehistoric paintings at the Pech Merle cave in the Lot region of France. It was whilst working underground that she claimed to be receiving inspiration, and even direct instructions, from a higher, mystical, plane, channelling the same energies from the caves that had possessed the prehistoric shamans who had preceded her. Through painting, Van Kooten discovered a physical expression of these energies.
There is something intriguing and seductive about the prehistoric cave sites that preoccupied Van Kooten. Most of the art was created at a time when we humans were not at the top of the food chain. Our connection to the landscape and the surrounding environment helped keep us alive and fed into storytelling and rituals lost to time. We can now only try and pick at the few scraps we have and guess at the mind sets of our long-ago forebears.
The artists in this exhibition offer manifold approaches to their painting practices as they prod and probe, scratch away and paint, looking for meaning in a world far removed from our prehistoric ancestors.
This exhibition is split into two parts: Oceans Apart, Salford, Manchester: 9th Oct – 7th Nov 2021 and Oriel Carn, Caernarfon: 2nd Oct – 14th Nov 2021
Exhibiting artists: Jonathan Anderson, Helen Blake, Philippa Brown, Philip Cheater, Lara Davies, Lucy Donald, Tom Down, Mark Folds, Amy Goldring, Steph Goodger, Gareth Griffith, Paul Hughes, Tim Kelly, Hetty van Kooten, Enzo Marra, James Moore, Sarah Poland, Jonathan Powell, Dylan Williams, Richard Williams, Jessica Woodrow
STAND CLOSE AND BREATHE ME IN
25th June to 25th July 2021
Stand Close and Breathe Me In is a group exhibition of paintings which explore the collective spirit of small scale imagery within the context of a painting-viewer relationship.
These paintings draw you in. They initiate an intimate response and engage the viewer in the act of looking. They arrest us at close quarters via the smallest of painterly activities and devices
Each painting punctuates the next and radiates into the space and into each other. They converse and mingle, sending out messages like invisible rays. They enter the body through the eyes and remain there as propositions, questions and after-images.
These paintings remind us that ‘size isn’t everything’.
Up close, we’re able to scrutinise content and the manner in which the paintings were made. We experience the surface as a consequence of process, feeling each painting’s meaning through its distinctive mode of making.
At a distance, we witness the bigger picture, where the paintings converse silently at arms length, collaborating as dots and dashes and through repetition and strength in numbers. Approaching these paintings they begin to reveal and conceal themselves simultaneously. Clarity is administered in their obscurity and abstraction before we back away to achieve a sense of perspective in the collective.
Exhibiting artists:
Julian Brown, Kena Brown, Ruth Calland, Andrew Crane, Jeff Dellow, Lisa Denyer, Rosalind Faram, Susie Hamilton, Alex Hanna, David Lock, David Manley, Enzo Marra, Gideon Pain, Alison Pilkington, Dan Samuel Thomas, Katie Trick, Rhys Trussler, Grant Watson, Lily-Ella Westacott, Casper White, Dylan Williams
STAND CLOSE AND BREATHE ME IN
Curated by Enzo Marra, in conjunction with Contemporary British Painting
Exhibition opens Friday 25th June and continues to Sunday 25th July 2021 By appointment only – please email oceansapartgallery@gmail.com
Socially distanced Finissage – Friday 23rd July, 6-9pm
25th June to 25th July 2021
Stand Close and Breathe Me In is a group exhibition of paintings which explore the collective spirit of small scale imagery within the context of a painting-viewer relationship.
These paintings draw you in. They initiate an intimate response and engage the viewer in the act of looking. They arrest us at close quarters via the smallest of painterly activities and devices
Each painting punctuates the next and radiates into the space and into each other. They converse and mingle, sending out messages like invisible rays. They enter the body through the eyes and remain there as propositions, questions and after-images.
These paintings remind us that ‘size isn’t everything’.
Up close, we’re able to scrutinise content and the manner in which the paintings were made. We experience the surface as a consequence of process, feeling each painting’s meaning through its distinctive mode of making.
At a distance, we witness the bigger picture, where the paintings converse silently at arms length, collaborating as dots and dashes and through repetition and strength in numbers. Approaching these paintings they begin to reveal and conceal themselves simultaneously. Clarity is administered in their obscurity and abstraction before we back away to achieve a sense of perspective in the collective.
Exhibiting artists:
Julian Brown, Kena Brown, Ruth Calland, Andrew Crane, Jeff Dellow, Lisa Denyer, Rosalind Faram, Susie Hamilton, Alex Hanna, David Lock, David Manley, Enzo Marra, Gideon Pain, Alison Pilkington, Dan Samuel Thomas, Katie Trick, Rhys Trussler, Grant Watson, Lily-Ella Westacott, Casper White, Dylan Williams
STAND CLOSE AND BREATHE ME IN
Curated by Enzo Marra, in conjunction with Contemporary British Painting
Exhibition opens Friday 25th June and continues to Sunday 25th July 2021 By appointment only – please email oceansapartgallery@gmail.com
Socially distanced Finissage – Friday 23rd July, 6-9pm
LOVERS LANE
30th April to 30th May 2021
Lovers Lane is an exhibition of paintings by fourteen artists whose work luxuriates in form, immediacy and the poetics of a Dionysian approach to painting. Depicting recognisable content, however loose that might be, this exhibition demonstrates an enthusiastic return to figuration, through flexible representation, poetic emblems and the sensual energy carried in the body and the land.
In the Chauvet Caves in Southern France a powerful connection is made between painting and person. The paintings in these caves speak to a deep human drive for figuration and the documentation of man’s relationship with the world and its creatures – a truly archaic ‘activity-presence’. We are there in the caves, with the people, making paintings about our sensory-lived-felt-dreamt-fluid place of being.
The paintings in this exhibition are descendants of these origins of expression and they embody the passionate drive of their forebears. And these painters imbue their surroundings – they permeate their environment, merging human with anything else that feels right. Here a Dionysian relationship is born, through wild abandon and with the desire for release taking the fore. Dionysus, the lingerer, the creator, the cultivator, the believer, the deceiver – these paintings are artefacts possessing symbolic language, constructed in dream-states.
And where there is Dionysus, there is Apollo.
Wild nature coupled with restraint, such is this kind of painting. Wiping, slopping, scraping, etching. Rushing against the painterly device – the stretcher frame – in an assault on order. But necessary to make a painting. Without the enthusiastic symptoms of a frenzy; the bunched paint, brush hair, the dream mix, the racing line, thumb prints, oil bleeding through the back, we have no painting. These paintings are the bloody nose Dionysus gave Apollo. Lovers Lane is a saloon, post bar fight.
Exhibiting Artists:
Sophie Birch, Zac Bradley, Peter Burns, B. Chehayeb, Martyn Cross, Anna-Lise Horsley, Anna Ilsley, David R Newton, Alexander James Pollard, Jess Power, Ben Risk, Jake Russell, Joy Simpson, Julie-Ann Simpson
LOVERS LANE opens on Friday 30th April and continues to Sunday 30th May, 12-4pm daily, by appointment only - please email oceansapartgallery@gmail.com.
There will be a socially distanced Finissage on Friday 28th May, 6-9pm.
30th April to 30th May 2021
Lovers Lane is an exhibition of paintings by fourteen artists whose work luxuriates in form, immediacy and the poetics of a Dionysian approach to painting. Depicting recognisable content, however loose that might be, this exhibition demonstrates an enthusiastic return to figuration, through flexible representation, poetic emblems and the sensual energy carried in the body and the land.
In the Chauvet Caves in Southern France a powerful connection is made between painting and person. The paintings in these caves speak to a deep human drive for figuration and the documentation of man’s relationship with the world and its creatures – a truly archaic ‘activity-presence’. We are there in the caves, with the people, making paintings about our sensory-lived-felt-dreamt-fluid place of being.
The paintings in this exhibition are descendants of these origins of expression and they embody the passionate drive of their forebears. And these painters imbue their surroundings – they permeate their environment, merging human with anything else that feels right. Here a Dionysian relationship is born, through wild abandon and with the desire for release taking the fore. Dionysus, the lingerer, the creator, the cultivator, the believer, the deceiver – these paintings are artefacts possessing symbolic language, constructed in dream-states.
And where there is Dionysus, there is Apollo.
Wild nature coupled with restraint, such is this kind of painting. Wiping, slopping, scraping, etching. Rushing against the painterly device – the stretcher frame – in an assault on order. But necessary to make a painting. Without the enthusiastic symptoms of a frenzy; the bunched paint, brush hair, the dream mix, the racing line, thumb prints, oil bleeding through the back, we have no painting. These paintings are the bloody nose Dionysus gave Apollo. Lovers Lane is a saloon, post bar fight.
Exhibiting Artists:
Sophie Birch, Zac Bradley, Peter Burns, B. Chehayeb, Martyn Cross, Anna-Lise Horsley, Anna Ilsley, David R Newton, Alexander James Pollard, Jess Power, Ben Risk, Jake Russell, Joy Simpson, Julie-Ann Simpson
LOVERS LANE opens on Friday 30th April and continues to Sunday 30th May, 12-4pm daily, by appointment only - please email oceansapartgallery@gmail.com.
There will be a socially distanced Finissage on Friday 28th May, 6-9pm.
INNER SPACE
24th October to 1st November 2020
University Centre St Helens BA Painting Degree Show, class of 2020
We are delighted host an exhibition of paintings by six students from University Centre St Helens, who were unable to have their degree show in June due to the covid situation. This is a ‘later than usual’ celebration of their achievement and success on the BA Painting programme.
Artists:
Nicola Bolton
Katherine Hickey
Shannon Moore
Chloe Pennington
Rosie Shaw
Emma Wood
Image: Nicola Bolton, ‘Door #3’ (2020), Oil paint on wood with
Perspex
24th October to 1st November 2020
University Centre St Helens BA Painting Degree Show, class of 2020
We are delighted host an exhibition of paintings by six students from University Centre St Helens, who were unable to have their degree show in June due to the covid situation. This is a ‘later than usual’ celebration of their achievement and success on the BA Painting programme.
Artists:
Nicola Bolton
Katherine Hickey
Shannon Moore
Chloe Pennington
Rosie Shaw
Emma Wood
Image: Nicola Bolton, ‘Door #3’ (2020), Oil paint on wood with
Perspex
YELLOW ARCHANGEL
An Exhibition of Rhizomic Painting
4th September to 2nd October 2020
In Bluebells in senescence in ancient hedgerows
You will notice hooded golden hoards of Yellow Archangel, Familiar like bad man’s posies
Spreading like wildfire like billy–oh.
It is below ground their true efficacy lies
Stems tunnelling horizontally
Unabated,
Firing out exploratory roots at haphazard intervals,
In unrelenting permeation
Ever more, advancing more.
In painting in expanded painting,
We shall speak of this rhizome plant
And concern ourselves with the significance of its lateral stem system For we are concerned with permeations and syntheses,
With cross pollinations and lack of restrictions.
We shall not concern ourselves with
Tap
Root
Systems
Burrowing
Down.
So let us go then you and I
And explore new territories,
Let us see the extent to which painting has spread–
Pausing at the perpetual intersections of the streets,
Let us observe its unions, networks and guises
And so indulged might we become that the lands from whence we came will feel so Very far away at times.
Let us experience the infinite possibilities of what painting is (Ah, its impurities! Its loss of substance!)
Like a wayfarer of no fixed destination
Perpetually shifting territories
Seeing the lands into which painting has been permitted;
And some might say “oh things were so much better here before all this, We knew where we were!”
But we shall not bother with them
For the shifting interests us.
Indulging ourselves in conjecture
As to the whys and wherefores of the spread,
The hybridizing and homogenizing–
We must understand that what we have considered permanent
We have misconstrued;
Painting with all its constituent parts has never had an independent existence Rather it has a co-dependent relationship with so many non-painting elements, Of soil of rain and cloud and sun.
Interdependent with everything else in its aliveness
Painting must proceed–
If we try to find the essence of painting
We
Shall
Surely
Not.
Paul Bramley
Exhibiting artist and curator of Yellow Archangel
Exhibiting Artists: Shane Bradford, Paul Bramley, John Bunker, Liz Elton, Jack Ginno, Laurence Grave, Jacqui Hallum, Helen Hayward, Clare Holdstock, Allyson Keehan, Jo McGonigal, Adrian Wald, Sarah Kate Wilson
Yellow Archangel opens on Friday 4th September until Friday 2nd October, by appointment. Please email: oceansapartgallery@gmail.com
There will be a socially distanced Finissage on Friday 25th September, 6-8pm – details and updates to follow on social media.
An Exhibition of Rhizomic Painting
4th September to 2nd October 2020
In Bluebells in senescence in ancient hedgerows
You will notice hooded golden hoards of Yellow Archangel, Familiar like bad man’s posies
Spreading like wildfire like billy–oh.
It is below ground their true efficacy lies
Stems tunnelling horizontally
Unabated,
Firing out exploratory roots at haphazard intervals,
In unrelenting permeation
Ever more, advancing more.
In painting in expanded painting,
We shall speak of this rhizome plant
And concern ourselves with the significance of its lateral stem system For we are concerned with permeations and syntheses,
With cross pollinations and lack of restrictions.
We shall not concern ourselves with
Tap
Root
Systems
Burrowing
Down.
So let us go then you and I
And explore new territories,
Let us see the extent to which painting has spread–
Pausing at the perpetual intersections of the streets,
Let us observe its unions, networks and guises
And so indulged might we become that the lands from whence we came will feel so Very far away at times.
Let us experience the infinite possibilities of what painting is (Ah, its impurities! Its loss of substance!)
Like a wayfarer of no fixed destination
Perpetually shifting territories
Seeing the lands into which painting has been permitted;
And some might say “oh things were so much better here before all this, We knew where we were!”
But we shall not bother with them
For the shifting interests us.
Indulging ourselves in conjecture
As to the whys and wherefores of the spread,
The hybridizing and homogenizing–
We must understand that what we have considered permanent
We have misconstrued;
Painting with all its constituent parts has never had an independent existence Rather it has a co-dependent relationship with so many non-painting elements, Of soil of rain and cloud and sun.
Interdependent with everything else in its aliveness
Painting must proceed–
If we try to find the essence of painting
We
Shall
Surely
Not.
Paul Bramley
Exhibiting artist and curator of Yellow Archangel
Exhibiting Artists: Shane Bradford, Paul Bramley, John Bunker, Liz Elton, Jack Ginno, Laurence Grave, Jacqui Hallum, Helen Hayward, Clare Holdstock, Allyson Keehan, Jo McGonigal, Adrian Wald, Sarah Kate Wilson
Yellow Archangel opens on Friday 4th September until Friday 2nd October, by appointment. Please email: oceansapartgallery@gmail.com
There will be a socially distanced Finissage on Friday 25th September, 6-8pm – details and updates to follow on social media.
ENOUGH IS DEFINITELY ENOUGH
THE CONTINUOUS IMAGE
17th January to 14th February 2020
Linda Hemmersbach, Nicholas John Jones, Wendy McLean, Matthew
Musgrave, Tim Renshaw, Sharon Swaine
“Completing a picture is much more difficult than beginning it; in fact, it is impossible. I see the development of a picture as a flow of images, halted almost arbitrarily. An idea, or even just a thought, is ripped open, compressed and overlaid, splintered and bundled again, readjusted.” (Kurt Kocherscheidt, 1991)
‘The Continuous Image’ is an exhibition of contemporary painting by six artists based in London, Manchester and Oslo. It presents groups of paintings as sets of objects relating to each other in a specific space and to the energy around them.
Each of the artists seek activeimages; open, malleable and, at times, unstable forms and spaces. Rather than envisioning complete images they work consciously without a known end. Paintings act as thought forms that emerge slowly out of the process of painting itself. There is an interest in avoiding, upending, protracting, or stopping before or beyond resolution, finding power in dynamic economical approaches which understate and enfold a subject. Partial images come together and dissolve again, their painterly presence reaching out into the surrounding space.
Attempting to feel their way through the process, the artists are interested in seeing if painted images can hold onto bodily sensations, slight actions or observations in being. In successive actions of laying down of paint, on one or many surfaces, opportunistic images push forward unlooked for avenues, while anticipated ones may shy away. In each artist’s practice repetition plays a pivotal role, from harking to an unseen, absent or buried image to unfolding the possibilities of a twisting, pushing or travelling line.
Ambiguous and continuously shifting, these paintings function
as transitional objects, allowing movement from something felt or observed to a new form, which reveals itself and takes on different meanings over time. Like a sketch that could be added to or pages in a book to be turned, they negate the finite quality of a painting, hoping for open-endedness, uncertainty and possibility.
Exhibition curated by Linda Hemmersbach and Wendy McLean
Preview: Friday 17thJanuary, 6-9pm.
The exhibition continues by appointment until 14thFebruary. Please
email linda.hemmersbach@gmail.com.
Oceans Apart – OA Studios – 24-26 King Street – Salford – M3 7DG
Image; Sharon Swaine, A Place Of Nestling Green, 2010, Oil on
canvas, 30 x 35 cm
17th January to 14th February 2020
Linda Hemmersbach, Nicholas John Jones, Wendy McLean, Matthew
Musgrave, Tim Renshaw, Sharon Swaine
“Completing a picture is much more difficult than beginning it; in fact, it is impossible. I see the development of a picture as a flow of images, halted almost arbitrarily. An idea, or even just a thought, is ripped open, compressed and overlaid, splintered and bundled again, readjusted.” (Kurt Kocherscheidt, 1991)
‘The Continuous Image’ is an exhibition of contemporary painting by six artists based in London, Manchester and Oslo. It presents groups of paintings as sets of objects relating to each other in a specific space and to the energy around them.
Each of the artists seek activeimages; open, malleable and, at times, unstable forms and spaces. Rather than envisioning complete images they work consciously without a known end. Paintings act as thought forms that emerge slowly out of the process of painting itself. There is an interest in avoiding, upending, protracting, or stopping before or beyond resolution, finding power in dynamic economical approaches which understate and enfold a subject. Partial images come together and dissolve again, their painterly presence reaching out into the surrounding space.
Attempting to feel their way through the process, the artists are interested in seeing if painted images can hold onto bodily sensations, slight actions or observations in being. In successive actions of laying down of paint, on one or many surfaces, opportunistic images push forward unlooked for avenues, while anticipated ones may shy away. In each artist’s practice repetition plays a pivotal role, from harking to an unseen, absent or buried image to unfolding the possibilities of a twisting, pushing or travelling line.
Ambiguous and continuously shifting, these paintings function
as transitional objects, allowing movement from something felt or observed to a new form, which reveals itself and takes on different meanings over time. Like a sketch that could be added to or pages in a book to be turned, they negate the finite quality of a painting, hoping for open-endedness, uncertainty and possibility.
Exhibition curated by Linda Hemmersbach and Wendy McLean
Preview: Friday 17thJanuary, 6-9pm.
The exhibition continues by appointment until 14thFebruary. Please
email linda.hemmersbach@gmail.com.
Oceans Apart – OA Studios – 24-26 King Street – Salford – M3 7DG
Image; Sharon Swaine, A Place Of Nestling Green, 2010, Oil on
canvas, 30 x 35 cm
TWO-FOLD
6th September to 20th September 2019
Keith Ashcroft, Richard Baker, Simon Burton, Chris Gilvan- Cartwright, Jake Clark, Sam Douglas, Martin Golland, Steph Goodger, Ian Hartshorne, Thomas Hylander, Lisa Ivory, Phil King, Fischer Mustin, David R Newton, Tom Palin, Mandy Payne, Joseph O’Rourke, Paul Smith, Duncan Swann, Joanna Whittle
6th September to 20th September 2019
Keith Ashcroft, Richard Baker, Simon Burton, Chris Gilvan- Cartwright, Jake Clark, Sam Douglas, Martin Golland, Steph Goodger, Ian Hartshorne, Thomas Hylander, Lisa Ivory, Phil King, Fischer Mustin, David R Newton, Tom Palin, Mandy Payne, Joseph O’Rourke, Paul Smith, Duncan Swann, Joanna Whittle
ALPS
Private View – Thursday 30th May, 6pm till 9pm.
A Little Painting Show is an exhibition of little paintings by 23 artists, curated by Josie Jenkins and Anna Ketskemety
Opening times: 12-5pm by appointment from Friday 31st May to Friday 7th June - contact josiejenks@yahoo.co.uk
Closing event 12pm - 4pm, Sat 8th June
Exhibiting artists:
Keith Ashcroft, Zac Bradley, Gay Caul, Jenny Eden, Ula Fung, Sarah Gilman, Oscar Godfrey, Rosie Greenhalgh, Bryan Hible, Jason Hollis, Josie Jenkins, Anna Ketskemety, Michael Lacey, Lindsey Lavender, David Lock, Brendan Lyons, Max Mallender, Enzo Marra, Daniel Newsham, J A Nichols, Jen Orpin, Bernadette O'Toole, Jasmes Quin.
Private View – Thursday 30th May, 6pm till 9pm.
A Little Painting Show is an exhibition of little paintings by 23 artists, curated by Josie Jenkins and Anna Ketskemety
Opening times: 12-5pm by appointment from Friday 31st May to Friday 7th June - contact josiejenks@yahoo.co.uk
Closing event 12pm - 4pm, Sat 8th June
Exhibiting artists:
Keith Ashcroft, Zac Bradley, Gay Caul, Jenny Eden, Ula Fung, Sarah Gilman, Oscar Godfrey, Rosie Greenhalgh, Bryan Hible, Jason Hollis, Josie Jenkins, Anna Ketskemety, Michael Lacey, Lindsey Lavender, David Lock, Brendan Lyons, Max Mallender, Enzo Marra, Daniel Newsham, J A Nichols, Jen Orpin, Bernadette O'Toole, Jasmes Quin.
UPSIDE DOWN BUCKET
26th April to 28th April 2019
Preview: Friday 26 April 2019, 6-11pm
Oceans Apart presents 'Upside Down Bucket', a collaborative exhibition curated by Fine Art students from Manchester School of Art.
Upside Down Bucket is an exhibition of paintings by six Manchester based artists. Linked together through shared concerns about lost futures and explorations into the absurd, the works display a strong sense of playfulness as well as acting as a commentary on painting itself.
26th April to 28th April 2019
Preview: Friday 26 April 2019, 6-11pm
Oceans Apart presents 'Upside Down Bucket', a collaborative exhibition curated by Fine Art students from Manchester School of Art.
Upside Down Bucket is an exhibition of paintings by six Manchester based artists. Linked together through shared concerns about lost futures and explorations into the absurd, the works display a strong sense of playfulness as well as acting as a commentary on painting itself.
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