Bryony Bainbridge | Charlotte Squire | Katherine Jones | Nick Kennedy | Rachael Clewlow | Thurle Wright
Two young curators, Filipa Ferreira Mendes and Jessica Temple, have been invited to curate Journeys, marking the third year of exhibitions by young guest curators.
From reconstituted and re-presented maps, photographic discoveries and documentations, the journey of an object transformed and a pencil traveling over a page, this exhibition travels between different mediums and different ideas in its response to the exploration of journeys.
Bryony Bainbridge's digital and analogue photographs document her time living in Brataslava and Newcastle. Her black and white photographs combine a unique eye for detail, as the moments and events around her are captured. From a wide range of subjects, the images in this exhibition have been selected for their direct or indirect depictions of journeys; Rain streams past a moving window, like a pencil drawing running across a page. Bryony’s photographs invite the viewer to re-engage with the world around them in order to refresh the conscious experience. Her photographs hold an instant, made timeless.
Rachael Clewlow's records journeys and presents us with this accumulated data. Through rigorous and dedicated, almost ritualistic daily recording, she maintains statistical diaries, which provide a detailed record of her movements and whereabouts at specific points in time. From this, Rachael produces intricate drawings and paintings. Ideas about mapping and the presentation of data are transformed to display sets of pictorial information. Through her style of presentation she renders the maps difficult to read; they become useless as functioning objects and become contradictions. The use of subtle line and colour draws the viewer close to scrutinise the work, giving importance to surface, materials, detail and a high level of finish.
Nick Kennedy's drawings are immediate and involve the use of systems or devices to disrupt or interfere with his control over the process of making. Nick explores the notions of chance, order and control. Using a spinning top, Nick has created a series of drawings which explore the conflict between chance and influence, order and chaos, success and failure, rules and irregularity. In this context we are asked to consider these ideas and the journey of these lines as analogies for life’s journeys. Nick’s engagement with installation, site specificity and audience participation challenges the boundaries of drawing.
Bubble High is the second of Katherine Jones' artists books exhibited at jaggedart. Made in collaboration with the award winning poet Retta Bowen the book takes the form of an exceptionally beautiful and unique mobile, which appears in the gallery, suspended in flight. Katherine’s collographs and etchings depict the reoccurring motif of a house, often in a natural environment. Conflicting ideas of nurture, protection and collaboration which are prevalent in Katie’s prints, become comparable to ideas of returning or leaving the figurative or actual home.
Charlotte Squire creates work which exists between assemblage, sculpture and installation. She reconfigures and remakes lampshades and lights, creating intriguing new forms; some tall and elegant, some stout and warm, they exude certain human qualities. Her pieces are created from second-hand materials, which generate a sense of the familiar and allow the viewer to attach parallel narratives to the objects. The use of recycled media such as lamps and tables can also be viewed as illusive to the long history of textiles. Charlotte is interested in exploring the duality between the home-made and the mass produced. By re-appropriating and deconstructing found, everyday materials, sending them on a journey of transformation, there is an unusual paradox where the lights retain an element of functionality despite their new forms.
Thurle Wright’s intricate paper works are influenced by language, nature and their systematic and structural properties. Thurle patiently folds, morphs, cuts and contorts her various paper sources, in order to distort and deconstruct their original meaning and purpose. She frequently refers to maps and classical works of literature as her source material. In their original form, by reading a map or a book, the reader is taken on a different type of journey, which is paralleled by the complex transformation that these materials go through as they become artworks. Her paper shapes and the way they are tidily arranged render alluring works of art, which awaken curiosity.