Zip
7-15 February 2019
Declan Ackroyd, Hannah Barker, Samuel Barry, Jade Blood, Odin Coleman, Aloe Corry, Joanna Georghadjis, Henry Gonnet, James Hall, Tracy Himsworth, Sian Hutchings, Mag Jittaksa, Tommy Keenan, Ed Lawrenson, Ciara Ní Léanacháin, Samantha Lourens, Euan Lynn, Miria Miria, David Reynolds, Holly Standen
Twenty artists studying on the BxNU Master of Fine Art programme at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, are showcasing their individual practices in a two-week group exhibition.
Working out of the studios located at BALTIC 39, Newcastle upon Tyne, the work in this exhibition reflects the multidisciplinary and the experimental open nature of the studio environment driven by individual investigative processes.
Declan Ackroyd’s practice explores the materiality of objects, aiming to consider a world beyond human beings.
Hannah Barker works with writing, photography, and spoken performance. She is currently working with the process of erasure to create prose and poetry from newspaper articles. The forms and strategies of Dada poetry and writers such as George Perec are a significant influence on her work.
Samuel Barry’s practice explores areas of slippage between performative actions and their subsequent documentation, using humour to subvert whilst maintaining an appreciation of scepticism.
Samuel Barry, (left) Chin Up, 2019, steel, (right) Have you heard the joke about the tyre stuck in the tree..., 2019, fibre print. Photo: James Hall
David Reynolds, Untitled (detail), 2018, clay, oil paint, dimensions variable. Photo: Declan Ackroyd
Jade Blood is a mixed media artist using printmaking and desirable discarded materials to create assemblages that include a useful or useable element.
Odin Coleman’s work deals with questions of branding, nostalgia, and national identity. Lying somewhere in the periphery of printmaking and cartooning, he aims to create alternative meanings for found images through reconstructing and repositioning them into new, often ambivalent scenarios.
Aloe Corry’s practice is rooted in observation and the study of mysterious objects and bodies. She works with painting, printmaking, and text to investigate myth, disjointed narrative, and uncertain spaces.
Joanna Georghadjis is interested in how the combination of space, pattern and colour can have the ability to gain a public reaction. Her work speaks of materiality, paint and the tangible. Focusing on painterly patterns, her practice explores how a familiar scene can temporarily be beautified.
Henry Gonnet records the effects that small conditional changes have within generative systems. Through processes of mark making, control, and chance he explores the extent to which our actions can be considered entirely of our own determination.
James Hall’s ink and acrylic multimedia paintings explore variations and similarities between everyday items in a bold, graphic style. They serve as playful prompts to pay closer attention to the finer details in life that might otherwise pass us by.
Tracy Himsworth has been exploring spaces in which to attempt to hide, both physically and psychologically, within the busy urban fabric of the city. Hiding Spaces/Spaces to Hide (2019) takes the form of physical, experimental and performative activities, as well as contemplative, photographic and reflective observations.
Sian Hutchings’ practice is primarily performative. The focal point of her work is the appreciation of how verbs function within a sentence. She seeks to uncover the life inherent in materials, imbuing them with new sensory qualities.
Mag Jittaksa is an abstract artist from Thailand who captures objects of mental value with sarcastic repetitive elements. He has a special interest in things that are often over-valued in our materialistic culture.
Tommy Keenan’s clothing constructions/inventions are spawned from a concern over identity politics where gender is at stake. Keenan focuses on manipulating objects to examine his ambiguous feelings towards conventional stereotypes of masculinity.
Tommy Keenan, BE4T M3, 2019, mixed media, 103x33x56cm. Photo: James Hall
Hannah Barker, Sausages and Custard Makes Your Hair Curl!, 2019, mixed media, 126x131x102cm. Photo: Declan Ackroyd
Ed Lawrenson’s practice utilises investigative journalism and archival ephemera to reimagine historical events. Whilst fictionalising point B between points A and C, it is sometimes unclear whether or not C is the final destination.
Ciara Ní Léanacháin’s practice exists in the crevices between poetry, the absurd, and live art. Reconnecting with her love of the Irish language Gaeilge (Gaelic), Irish mythology and oral histories, she grafts a new mythology of decolonisation.
Samantha Lourens has facilitated a collaborative project entitled ‘Communal Voices’. The project focuses on projecting poems related to the subjects of identity, migration, and mobility. The five collaborators each work on experimental language, inspired by documentation taken by the group around Newcastle city centre and Ouseburn.
Euan Lynn works across photography, painting, performance and installation, to reveal the politics within our cities. Focussing on the history of modernist redevelopment and the utopian ideas this era sought to embody, his work explores the lived reality of these spaces in the contemporary landscape.
Miria Miria’s multi-layered assemblages evoke inner emotions concerning our relationality, or interconnectedness to non-human entities and otherness within the underlying thematic of ecology.
Miria Miria, Uguisi-iro ni Shu (moss-green with cadmium-red) (detail), 2019, found objects with paintings (Japanese Sumi-ink and oil on linen), dimensions variable. Photo: James Hall
Euan Lynn, Part Of The Bigger Thing, 2018, grip tape and gloss enamel on plywood, 65cx65cm. Photo: James Hall
David Reynolds’ recent works are an attempt at dissolving together a personal narrative with broader concepts, stimuli and process.
Holly Standen’s installation addresses how the UK arms trade has affected the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. The materials relate to the process of death and burial in Yemen, where the dead are buried in a shroud before sunset on the same day.
Zip Performance Event
Friday 15 February 7-9pm
A closing event for ‘Zip’ featuring performances by Siân Hutchings, Ciara Ní Léanacháin, and Holly Standen.
Take a video tour of the exhibition
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