The Manchester Contemporary, Manchester
4-6 November 2022
Vane is pleased to be participating in The Manchester Contemporary. You can find us at stand 154.
A presentation celebrating 25 years of Vane featuring artists from across the years. Established in 1997, many of the artists who featured at Vane early in their careers have proceeded to establish national and international profiles for their work. Some artists Vane has continued to work with across the years, others are making their return to the fold to help celebrate this landmark anniversary. Artists showing are Graham Dolphin, Kerstin Drechsel, Kirsty Harris, Simon Le Ruez, Jock Mooney, Stephen Palmer, Narbi Price, Morten Schelde, Matilda Sutton, Flora Whiteley, and Stuart Mel Wilson.
Graham Dolphin (born 1972, Stafford, lives in Shotley Bridge)
Bowie Guardian, 2022, gouache on newspaper
The Guardian newspaper cover, 12 January 2016, reporting David Bowie’s death has been used as a surface on which to paint, in small, undulating text, lyrics from Bowie’s catalogue. Dolphin re-posts everyday objects into art through a laborious handmade process which aims to question notions of cultural and economic values in a secular age.
Kerstin Drechsel (born 1966, Reinbek, Germany, lives in Berlin, Germany)
#1.4, from the ‘FACES’ series, 2022, watercolour and stamp colour on paper
The ‘FACES’ series deals with pareidolia, the phenomenon of perceiving faces in random inanimate objects, clouds, even bodies. The tendency of the mind to impose meaningful interpretation on these visual stimuli is believed by psychologists to be an important part of the mind’s ability to interpret our environment and the emotional state of those around us.
Kirsty Harris (born 1978, Nottinghamshire, lives in London)
Grapple, 2021, chalk and pencil on board
Harris’ chalk and pencil drawings aim for a quiet sense of unease, to harness the beauty and fragility of the chosen medium, almost like a specimen, she captures fleeting moments of history in a consuming and meticulous manner. She is drawn to the decisive moment of the atom bomb: the disruption of the landscape, the dust, the glow, the force of the explosion. She deliberates the split second that represents our race to self-destruction.
Simon Le Ruez (born 1970, Jersey, lives in Sheffield)
Vacation #4, 2019, Cromático paper, adhesive, pencil, felt pen, silver and gold pen, micro beads, coloured netting on heavyweight paper
Le Ruez’s drawings explore his interests in territory, transparency, fragility and transition, and take his fascination with making, colour and material combination to new and unexpected levels. His work aligns itself with the multifaceted themes of abandonment, freedom, desire and redemption. Potent relationships are key to the experience of his work and whilst these may be explored through form, material and structure, a deeper, more complex introspection permanently resides.
Jock Mooney (born 1982, Edinburgh, lives in Newcastle upon Tyne)
Ghost series, 2022, aluminium-copper sheet with enamel paint
Mooney has been inspired by Mexican ‘milagros’ (charms used for protection, and as a source of good luck) and Greek votive offerings. These ghosts, it would seem, are from a universe that is part Moomin, part video nasty, part sleepover.
Stephen Palmer (born 1967, Alton, lives in London)
Much is wronger, 2022, acrylic on panel
Palmer’s recent paintings start from a paper model made from a sheet of A4 that has been defaced through a series of actions. Started before the pandemic, much was changed in the period between conception and completion, and as hopes for a more equitable age based on all that we learned during that time have faded, the new normal sadly feels much like the old normal, only somehow ‘wronger’.
Narbi Price (born 1979, Hartlepool, lives in Gatehead)
Untitled Bench Painting (Lockdown) 4, 2022, acrylic on panel
Part of a series showing the plastic wrapped, decommissioned public benches seen in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Emblematic of the period for many, a subtly melancholy and banally violent sight, that spoke of the enforced separation of lockdown.
Morten Schelde (born 1972, Copenhagen, Denmark, lives in Skagen, Denmark)
House at Dawn, 2022, pencil and ink on paper
Schelde’s drawings show an intersection between real and imaginary spaces. There’s a slow unravelling of emotion, a brooding tension projected onto the places and objects he draws. The meaning of his work is elusive, the only certainty is the strokes of the pencil on the paper, markers of process.
Matilda Sutton (born 1994, London, lives in Newcastle upon Tyne)
Creep and Sweet thing, 2021, acrylic on paper
Sutton uses drawing and painting, cloth, clay and paper sculpture to investigate how and why we define ourselves as human, and not animal. Collapsing the faulty definition of the human is a way in to questioning other cultural binaries. The hairy women and their animal familiars are players and figures with whom we can explore the in-between places.
Stuart Mel Wilson (born 1986, Gateshead, lives in Newcastle upon Tyne)
English Literature series, 2022, cardboard, ink, posca pens
The title of Wilson’s sculptures comes from the English writer and broadcaster EM Forster’s quote ‘English literature is a flying fish. It is a sample of the life that goes on day after day beneath the surface; it is a proof that beauty and emotion exist in the salt, inhospitable sea.’ Wilson uses this to refer to his dyslexia, humorously giving his flying fish absurd and incongruous wings.
Flora Whiteley (born 1977, Oxford, lives in Oxford)
Untitled, 2020, graphite and gouache on card
One of several portraits of people (largely women) working in interior design, this is the likeness of Eileen Grey, modernist architect and furniture designer. Following a time of working mainly with depictions of interior space Whiteley began to want to come back to figures, or rather, characters. It seemed logical to draw the people whose work interested her.
Orbis Community at The Manchester Contemporary
Vane is based within the Orbis Community of creatives in Gateshead town centre. They will have their own presence at the fair this year with a showcase of work by individual artists, makers and groups based in, and working with, Orbis Community. Visit stand 156 to see work by Ampersand Inventions, Ben Applegarth, Alfons Bytautas, Nick Christie, Jack Coates, Feliks Culpa, Incubate Experimental Printmaking, Johnnyx, Jonpaul Kirvan, Melanie Kyles, Maker Space, Helen McClafferty, Adam Pointer, Rock And Rose, and Slow Hand Creative Studio.
Manchester Central
Windmill Street
Manchester
M2 3GX
www.themanchestercontemporary.co.uk
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