Previous Exhibitions

MYRIAD

HAECEITICA

HAECEITICA

Thursday 25th to Sunday 28th January 2024

On a Ribbon Run Parallel: The Paintings of David Auborn

The arrival of Auborn, a strange white-suited figure, momentarily disconcerted Pollard, jerking him roughly from his lassitude and torpor. Since Auborn’s departure to Manchester he had lived almost alone in his penthouse suite at the hotel. By day he had journeyed into the studio, immersing himself more and more deeply in the silent world of the surrounding sapphire and purple , indifferent to those pangs of mortality which haunted the mind of old Europe.

Auborn’s works were laid against the studio walls, propped against the funnels and the lattices of moss. In the centre of the room baroque vapour trails spilled from the metal gunboxes drawn up on a semi-circle of low electric eyes. Fantasticated whorls of coral cloud intermingled with countless smaller stones and industrial diamonds. This abandoned harvest of tubes and truncations bounced uneasily.

Looking across a diffuse straggle of spires, the flat sheet of the surface transformed into a jungle of cubist blocks . Warm, glutinous jelly clustered over the overstuffed chunky gradients. Their timelessness was held in the image of the chamber , which reinforced rather than diminished the circular rows of valves boomed off across toothy weaves.

Auborn’s bare feet sank into the soft carpeting, and he stepped past the cabinet and peered through the beads.

“They are all cousins of Leger , Tanguy and Schulze .”

He paused on his way out and whispered:

“Others too. Do you know Böcklin's painting, Island of the Dead, where the cypresses stand guard above a cliff pierced by a hypogeum, while a storm hovers over the sea? It's in the Kunstmuseum…….”

Pollard ignored the question. He was staring at one of the smaller paintings. Intricate crests and cartouches seemed to mount a continuous sustained rumble. Auborn gestured at the prismatic colors. The liquid ultramarines were Lozano-like. They gave each lozenge form a believability. A verisimilitude achieved with a simple fleck of white, ‘alla prima-ed’ into the centre of a pebble-size squishy. The black opaque water seemed to hang in solid vertical curtains, screening the dais in the centre of the auditorium as if hiding the ultimate sanctum of its depths.

Auborn occasionally prodded the tissue with a steel ruler, as if he were examining the pressed petals of some rare and perhaps poisonous blossom. He pointed at a smudge of sea-foam green, revealing a series of scumbled marks that traced starlike patterns across its bow.

Pollard paused at Auborn’s drawings. Above the banks the foliage glowed like painted snow, the only movement coming from the slow traverse of outstretched wings. A small work on the end wall with beaten edges emitted a hard continuous light so intense that the stones seemed fused together into a cruciform specter. The overlapping arcs hung in the air like the votive windows of a city of cathedrals.

Pollard could see countless smaller webs of ice, looking for the emeralds and rubies of roped together dimensions. One which he sensed through subtle clues. Partial pieces of a plan. A map of sorts. But the ambient glow framed in a neon sfumato had obliterated the few landmarks he might otherwise have recognized.

In one picture the absolute silence of the overhead canopy gave way to the open sky. The jewelled undergrowth of the surface began to feel embalmed. Stirred in a slow liquid way - as if forever marching.

Suddenly an old modern master with a deformed light-filled face passed. She gestured toward Auborn’s ‘grooves in the dusk’ before suddenly exiting. Gliding through a wall. He flinched back behind the cross but the melting plumage had vanished, whirling away among the crystal vaults. Auborn felt certain that he’d seen something eerie as the luminous wake faded.

Hand on heart - the art school felt like a stone-tape. Haunted. With each room jammed on repeat. Chewed up in the deck. Replaying the ghosts, cages and shadows of a ribbon run parallel.

One of them let out a wild screech. A smoky vandal-shape sat by two huge marine plants. Their self-devouring phantasmagoric jungles screamed silently together like the sump of some insane unconscious. Around their waists the lagoon of future laid down a frozen gauntlet.

An intact fragment, a landscape without time. All of them began to leave.
Auborn had been painting for hours on his tod. There had been no studio visit, and the ghosts like newly admitted entrants to paradise, had fled, eddying away around corners and into narrow alleyways.

Familiar intimacies were already beginning to repeat conspiring to dislodge a most brilliant chimera. As his strokes extended away in a wide bend he found himself slowly drifting, fusing with the dark jewelled beast of his own making.

A J Pollard

SCENIUS

SCENIUS

Thursday 18th to Sunday 21st January 2024

Keith Ashcroft, Robin Broadley, Elysia Byrd, Jenny Eden, Hayley Harman, Linda Hemmersbach, Owen Ramsay, Nathan Taylor

SCENIUS, curated by David Auborn, the current Freelands Studio Fellow in Painting at Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, is an exhibition of work by the people who generously contributed to David’s positive experience of the Fellowship last year. It celebrates these individuals both as people and artists deeply rooted in Manchester’s community, emphasising the collective spirit that nurtures support and warmth in the city’s artistic landscape.

Inspired by Brian Eno’s ‘scenius’ concept, the exhibition challenges the idea of solitary genius, highlighting the interconnectedness of diverse contributors forming a shared ‘scenius.’ This perspective suggests that intelligence or genius emerges from the collective efforts of a group, encouraging us to rethink culture by focusing on the entire ecology of ideas fostering new thoughts and work.

Exhibition curated by David Auborn
Funded generously by Freelands Foundation, London

@keithashcroft
@mexico_branch
@elysiabyrd
@jennyrutheden
@hayley.harman
@linda_hemmersbach
@owenramsay_
@than_taylor
@davidauborn
@mcrshart
@freelandsfoundation

Scenius opens with a PV on Thursday 18th January, 6-9pm, and continues to Sunday 21st January. The exhibition is open on Saturday 20th January 12-4pm and at all other times by appointment. Please email oceansapartgallery@gmail.com or DM on Instagram @oceansapartgallery / www.oceansapart.uk

FAST FRIENDS

FAST FRIENDS

11th November to 8th December 2023

Jhonatan Pulido, Luca Longhi, Susan Rocklin, Louis Appleby, Henny Acloque, Max Gimson, Luke Tomlinson, Brian Mountford

Fast Friends is an exhibition of paintings curated by Brian Mountford featuring work by him and seven of his friends. Friends made quickly through connections and conversations when Brian was studying painting. Rekindling the energy of this period, the paintings in this show act as a bridge for talking painting and provide a physical memory of prior discourse. They are the ancestorial produce of early friendships, living together in a new space where notions of fastness are examined again.

How fast a painting reveals itself depends on the interaction between painter and painting. I may finally get something to happen and realise what’s going on, or a painting may be won in five minutes through the eruption of pent-up potential. Sometimes I’m not able to accept new approaches to making and a painting is reversed, turned back when my mind has caught up with its material-concept and I see something in it I didn’t see before. This painting is not a fast friend but a late one, a psycho-experiential delay. And yet, the rush of understanding occurs rapidly, every time I encounter the painting thereafter. I forget the longevity of my friend’s gestation and replace slowness with recurring speed.

Contemporary painter Josh Smith refers to his paintings as friends he’s tired of or happy to see. “Being an artist involves a lot of time being alone. It’s hard to work when there’s other people around” (Smith talking at David Zwirner Paris, 2023). It’s a contradiction pertinent to painting whereby I’m surrounded by friends but alone; I can’t work around others but I’m in the presence of friends. Like paintings, some friends stay in your life, others come in and out, fast and frequently. Friendships can be different every time you enter the studio and the tension between ‘having you all there’ and ‘trying to understand you’ makes for the best kind of (non)sense, a most fruitful and continuous pursuit. As Josh says, “I try to make the best thing that I can that I don’t understand” (ibid.). When we do this, we must remember we’re amongst friends.

Written by Brian Mountford and Jenny Eden

Exhibition curated by Brian Mountford

Fast Friends opens with a PV on Friday 10th November, 6-9pm, and continues to Saturday 8th December. The exhibition is open by appointment – please email oceansapartgallery@gmail.com or DM on Instagram @oceansapartgallery / www.oceansapart.uk

SEEING REMAINS

Seeing Remains

16th September to 14th October 2023

Paula Baader Simon Burton Gabriela Giroletti Linda Hemmersbach
Nicholas John Jones Kentaro Okumura Sophie McKenna Andrew Seto

Seeing Remains brings together eight artists to consider notions of looking at painterly history.

Painting as archaeology – An image buried in the subconscious, waiting to be unearthed. Excavation by application; revealing through addition. Recovering that which was once seen, but cast aside; buried under the weight of new impressions. An expedition for discovery. Discovering new meaning in the remnants of history.

Painting as fragment – Accumulations of marks, moments from a scene that have been tackled, affirmed, removed or faded. Fragments of experience persist, lingering on the retina: particles of light flickering, bare feet in grass, hands in soil, a winding movement, the smell of rain.

Painting as remains – Carrying the dust and dirt of past decisions; marking time, connecting past, present, and future. Perseverance, despite doubt. Shifts in register, studies of colour. Allusions tested. Difficult routes traversed, but the surface remains, fixed in paint, looking forwards, visible to future eyes.

…

Painting is a contradictory process. It simultaneously connects with its past in order to face the now and move into the future. In the act of painting, history is encountered as it is applied. A trace of consciousness, the process of layering material offers insight as the hand and eye work together, gaining perspective, negotiating experience. Whether the artist works from a subject or allows the paint to lead the way, newly crafted visions offer up previously unencountered images; fresh perspectives that tell of ourselves and the world we live in, the worlds we create, and the worlds we discover.

Seeing Remains opens with a PV on Saturday 16th September, 5-8pm, and continues to Saturday 14th October. The exhibition is open by appointment – please email linda.hemmersbach@gmail.com or oceansapartgallery@gmail.com

www.oceansapart.uk / @oceansapartgallery

PLACE: ABSTRACT PAINTING

PLACE: ABSTRACT PAINTING

PV: Friday 10th Feb 2023, 6pm – 9pm

‘Place: Abstract Painting’ is a duo exhibition by Rick Copsey and Paul Cordwell.

Rick Copsey's work developed from a Neo-Romantic metamodern approach (newly formulated by philosophers Vermeulen and Van den Akker) exploring oscillations between post-modern hyperreality and early modern romanticism.

The 'Paintscape' series investigate illusions and perceptions around the contested territories of landscape painting and digital photography. A hybrid digital painting/photography practice; oil paint on canvas is digitally macro photographed using multiple viewpoints and lighting conditions.

From these originating images, a small number are selected for their impact as apparent simulation of landscape/seascape and, by extension, to the romantic/sublime aesthetic associated with the historical development of photography (by painters such as Le Gray).

Paul Cordwell's paintings attempt to balance spectres of material presence with stubborn, obdurate material facts; to maintain a subtle discordancy between solidity and a form of visual slippage in which images are mutable and unreliable things.

They playfully compact Modernism’s various spatial gameplays with implied and real surfaces into odd painterly object-events. These are very much intended to acknowledge the impurity of painting as a comfortably static and definable practice; self-consciously structured with a belief that there has been an absorption of the feral temporal flow of digital media within the static staining and compressions of twentieth-century non-representational paintings implied spaces.

Both artists tend to use the square as a formal framing and editing device equally indebted to the organizational severities of Modernist reduction and the more contemporary formats of Polaroids and Instagram.

Both attempt to maintain the paradox of a medium’s specificity and its organic capacity to seep and bleed into other media.

Exhibition continues to 11th March by appointment only on Saturdays from 12-4pm

Contact Paul Cordwell for appointments as follows: Email - paul.cordwell6@gmail.com
Tel - 07955 187386
@paulcordwell1 @rickcopsey

WINDOWPANE

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

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

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

MUDLARKS II

MUDLARKS II

DAN ROACH & REBECCA SITAR

24th 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 with a PV on Friday 24th June (6-9pm) and continues to Sunday 24th July, 12-4pm daily by appointment only - please email oceansapartgallery@gmail.com.

BIOGRAPHIES

DAN ROACH
Dan Roach (b. 1974, Barrow in Furness, UK) is a painter and printmaker based in Worcestershire. He graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from the University of Worcester in 2009 and an MA in Fine Art from the University of Gloucester in 2011. He is represented by Emma Hill, Eagle Gallery / EMH Arts, London, and is a Technical Lecturer at University of Worcester School of Art.

Roach has exhibited throughout the UK and in Europe. Selected group exhibitions include; A Hand Stuffed Mattress (2019) Terrace Gallery, London; Counterpoints (2017), So We Beat On (2016), WHITEOUT (2015), Wanderer's Field (2013) at Eagle Gallery / EMH Arts, London; Summer Mix (2015) Turps Gallery, London; The Discipline of Painting (2013) Harrington Mill, Nottingham; Without an Edge There Is No Middle (2013) Pluspace Gallery, Coventry. His most recent solo exhibition Cloud Chamber took place at Eagle Gallery / EMH Arts, London, in 2018.
www.danroach.co.uk
@_danroach_

REBECCA SITAR
Rebecca Sitar (b. 1969, Blackburn, UK) is an artist based in Manchester. She graduated with BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting from Winchester School of Art in 1991 and completed an MFA at Manchester School of Art in 1992. She is represented by Emma Hill, Eagle Gallery / EMH Arts, London, and is a Lecturer in Fine Art at University of Bolton.

Sitar has exhibited across the UK and Europe. Recent selected group exhibitions include; Drawn In (2022) Turnpike Gallery, Leigh; Dance First Think Later (2020) General Practice, Lincoln; Fully Awake 5.6 (2019) Freelands Foundation, London; Tracer Wedge (2018) P.S. Mirabel, Manchester; John Moores Painting Prize (2014) Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Other notable exhibitions include Beyond the Endgame: Abstract Painting in Manchester (2003) Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester; Beginnings: Times of our Lives (2000) Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Slow Burn: Meaning & Vision in Contemporary British Abstract Painting (1998) Mead Gallery, University of Warwick (touring). Her solo exhibitions include; Present & Elsewhere II (2007), Hinterland (2004), Ritual (2001) at Eagle Gallery / EMH Arts, London; Present & Elsewhere I (2006) Galerija Karas, Zagreb; Mind Breaths (2000) Turnpike Gallery, Leigh; Lightness & Weight (1996) Castlefield Gallery, Manchester.

Sitar’s work is held in various collections including Deutsche Bank AG, London; DLA, London; and Manchester Art Gallery.
www.rebeccasitar.com
@rebeccasitarart

WALKING IN TWO WORLDS / CERDDED MEWN DAU FYD

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

STAND CLOSE AND BREATHE ME IN

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

LOVERS LANE

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.

INNER SPACE

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

YELLOW ARCHANGEL

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.

ENOUGH IS DEFINITELY ENOUGH

Enough is Definitely Enough

7th March – 3rd April 2020

Nearly 50 contemporary artists have made new artworks in response to a postcard version of Velázquez’s masterpiece, Las Meninas for an exhibition at Oceans Apart in Salford. ‘Enough is Definitely Enough’ which opens on 7th March and runs to 3rd April, features a huge variety of different artistic responses to the Spanish painter’s masterpiece - arguably the most widely interpreted of all paintings.

Art Historian Daniel Arasse reflected many people's view that everything, or perhaps even nothing, has been said about Las Meninas -"what's the difference, enough is definitely enough!". The artists in the exhibition build upon previous interpretations by renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso, Richard Hamilton, Francesco Goya and Eve Sussman. Artists have long been actively influenced by the centuries old painting by Velázquez; with their responses, in turn, offering influence back to Las Meninas to enable new readings. With the artworks made for ‘Enough is Definitely Enough’ there is potential for new relationships with Velasquez's original painting to open up.

The exhibition is curated by Andrew Bracey and forms part of his PhD research at the University of Lincoln. He is exploring how contemporary artists have used and appropriated existing paintings by other artists, through a position of using the metaphor of the parasite and symbiosis in connection with painting. The exhibition is touring from General Practice, Lincoln with new artists being added for Oceans Apart. It will tour on to Pineapple Black, Middlesborough from 19th June – 18th July 2020.

Artists: Euripides Altintzoglou, Keith Ashcroft, Tristram
Aver, Maggie Ayliffe, Sarah Bennett, Juan Bolivar, Andrew Bracey, Louise Bristow, Kate Buckley, Louisa Chambers, Fiona Curran, Gordon Dalton, Karen David, Pip Dickens, Annabel Dover, Jenny Eden, Leo Fitzmaurice, Brendan Fletcher, Sarah Gillman, Rebecca Fortnum, Rachel Goodyear, Simón Granell, Tom Hackney, Sharon Hall, Lesley Halliwell, Simon Harris, Josie Jenkins, Ilona Kiss, Geoff Diego Litherland, Alison Lloyd, Cathy Lomax, Rachel Lumsden, Danica Maier, David Manley, Enzo
Marra, Robin Megannity, Andy Pepper, Yelena Popova, Magnus Quaife, James Quin, Daniel Rapley, Lucy Renton, John Rimmer, John M Robinson, David Ryan, Nick Simpson, Stephen Snoddy,
Soheila Sokhanvari, Chez Tenneson, Annabel Tilley, Katie Tomlinson, Alun Williams, Gerard Williams

Enough is Definitely Enough
7th March – 3rd April 2020
Private view Friday 6th March 6-8pm, all welcome.

Oceans Apart – OA Studios – 24-26 King Street – Salford – M3 7DG https://www.oceansapart.uk/

Open by appointment, email: oceansapartgallery@gmail.com

THE CONTINUOUS IMAGE

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

ALPS

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.

UPSIDE DOWN BUCKET

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.