FRESH 2016

Call for Entries Open

We are delighted to announce that the call for entries to the gallery's Annual Summer Show, is now OPEN.

For information including the Submission Guidelines and Terms & Conditions, please follow THIS LINK. We recommend reading both documents prior to submitting an entry. 

AIPAD 2016: RICHARD TUSCHMAN

Couple In The Street, 2014

Series Title: Once Upon A Time In Kazimierz

Number of artworks at AIPAD: 1

Edition: 2 + 1AP

Size: 63"x43"

Medium: Archival Pigment Print

Year: 2014

Additional Editions: 24"x18" | 36"x24" | 5+1AP in each size.

While Tuschman continues to pay tribute to those artists who have inspired him—Balthus, Brandt, de Chirico, Vermeer—the series also demonstrates a significant development in Tuschman’s oeuvre. The artist’s Eastern European Jewish ancestors resided in the vicinity of Kazimierz until circa 1900, and this forms part of the basis for weaving together a fictional narrative with strands of cultural and family history.

Well known for his Hopper Meditations series, the artist’s process continues to be labor intensive and meticulous. The staged photographs result from a sophisticated marriage of miniature dioramas with life-size models. The sets are photographed after being hand-built by the artist over several months, with models photographed separately and composited into the scenes. The resulting photographs are visually stunning constructions, richly imbued with nuances of Jewish customs and a sense of place.

References to cinema and theatre resonate across the work. While the artworks are constructed in an exacting manner, they are also deliberately made to fall away from reality—enhancing their theatricality—and to project a level of the surreal and a dreamlike quality. Each image can also be seen to perform as a film still, with each part adding to a larger narrative arc. Once Upon a Time in Kazimierz, as a chronologically sequenced story, leaves just enough gaps and open-endedness, to enable the viewer to impose a tale of their own, highlighting in many respects, the fluidity of dreams and of memory.

AIPAD 2016: HELEN SEAR

Caetera Fumus, 2015

Edition: 5 + 2AP

Size: 41"x33"

Medium: C-Type mounted to plexi

Year: 2015

Helen Sear is renowned as one of Wales’ most significant contemporary artists. Her practice can be characterized by her exploration of the crossover between photography and fine art, her focus on the co-existence of the human, animal, and natural worlds.

With an exemplary track record for producing high quality, conceptually rigorous work, Helen Sear’s current work shows particular maturity and sophistication, seamlessly moving between expanded notions of photography, sculpture and video, with the artist exhibiting great command of different materials and production processes.

The photographic artwork pictured here, was showcased at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), where she represented Wales with a solo exhibition in the Santa Maria Ausilliatrice. Caetera Fumus subtly references Mantegna’s third painting of Saint Sebastian, using it as a spatial guide onto which Sear has placed her own imagery and meaning. The vivid color of the rape seed, the red arrows piercing canvas and air rather than flesh, along with the clever layering of perspective and material, all combine to suggest an untouchable reality.

Helen Sear’s work has been published in Arts Review, Creative Camera, Art Newspaper and Art Monthly amongst others. Collections holding her work include Ernst & Young, Victoria & Albert Museum, British Council (Rome) and the Paul Wilson Collection. She lives and works in Wales (UK).