Necker Cube

Necker Cube, 2012, colour pencil on paper, 30 x 21 cm

There are well-known figures which flip between a few possibilities. These are known as ‘ambiguous figures’. They are extremely important for showing the dynamics of perception, the searching for hypotheses of objects that might or might not be in the external world. Here the answer- the perception- is never decided. There are different kinds of flipping ambiguities- between shapes, depths, and different objects. The best known is the Necker Cube.

Here there is no evidence to indicate which of the large faces is the front or the black. Vision entertains alternative, roughly equally likely hypotheses. So here we see it flip between two equally likely cubes as different depth hypotheses are entertained. What is not clear, is why it is only these depth hypotheses that are entertained and seen.

(Gregory, Richard L, Eye and Brain The Psychology of Seeing, Fifth Ed. 1998)

Flatland, Blyth Gallery, London

Louisa Chambers
Geoff Diego Litherland
Daisy Richardson

‘I am not a plane Figure, but a Solid. You call me a Circle; but in reality I am not a Circle, but an infinite number of Circles, of size varying from a Point to a Circle of thirteen inches in diameter, one placed on the top of the other.’

(Edwin A. Abbot Flatland A Romance of Many Dimensions)

The title of the exhibition derives from the narrative Flatland which was written by the English Clergyman, educator and Shakespearean scholar, Edwin A. Abbot. Flatland follows a journey of a square, a resident of two-dimensional Flatland who travels and intersects with other geometric shapes from different spatial planes. The character begins to reflect on how they perceive these unfamiliar forms through the eyes of a two-dimensional shape, a Flatlander.
 
The three artists in this exhibition situate objects in imaginary spaces that suggest they have arrived from any number of dimensions. Geological fragments and landscapes are suspended in alternative realities, as if frozen in time, allowing the figures to be seen from a multiplicity of viewpoints. Similarly, the flipping between ambiguous forms in both two and three dimensions allows a visual tension between the physical and psychological. This is heightened further when the surface of an object in three dimensions, is reduced to a one dimensional plane concentrating on just the line or brush mark.
 
Louisa Chambers examines ideas surrounding machines, devices, and inventions, and how they could assist humans living in temporary or placeless worlds. Multiple dimensions and perspectives are explored through the materiality of paint and the repetition of geometric motifs which are floating ambiguously in space. Impossible architectural constructions or forms are situated in alternative universes and dreamworlds suggesting an escape from the technological daily burden of robotic control on our lives.
 
Geoff Diego Litherland explores the tension between the natural world and its grasping appropriation by human influence. It draws from traditional genres of painting together with the rusty surrealism of science fiction and the phantasia of abstraction to create a parallel world that seeks to not only question our perception of nature, but paintings’ historical and current role in that. Lush Romantic landscapes appear to be contained within inscrutable technological structures, yet at the same time seen to recede into planes that suggest infinite space. They are radiant and disturbing with the fascination of the familiar made deeply strange.

Daisy Richardson is interested in alternative realities, layers of space and time and things that could be there. Some works use illusion to disguise themselves and others show normal objects acting in a bizarre way, looking towards the schism in the everyday. The interiors are very ordinary and faceless with extra-normal events occurring within them. The events also refer to human interaction; how spaces are shaped by what has happened within their confines and on the sites where they stand. How we can live somewhere so old that seems so new - modern technology co-existing with ancient fossils.

Blyth Gallery, Level 5, Sherfield Building, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ
28th November 2012 until 3rd January 2013
Private View: 27th November 2012, 6-9pm
Contact Email: gallery@imperial.ac.uk
Website: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/arts/visualart/blythgallery
 

ZAP 2012

One of my paintings has been selected for this year's Zeitgeist Open 2012. The painting, entitled Streaming is also being used for the promotion of the competition. See below for more details.

Private View: Friday 16 November 6-9pm
Exhibition continues: Saturday 17 November – Saturday 1 December 12-5pm
Late opening for SLAM Last Fridays – 30 November 6.30-8.30pm
Artists and Curators in Dialogue – Saturday 1 December 4-5pm
Bond House Project Space, ASC, Goodwood Road, New Cross , London, SE14 6BL

Website: http://www.zeitgeistartsprojects.com/exhibitions.html

 

 

Pulley

 

Pulley, 2012, acrylic on paper, 21 x 30 cm

 

 

pulley: / 'pʊli/

 

Definition of pulley

 

noun (plural pulleys)

a wheel with a grooved rim around which a cord passes, which act to change the direction of a force applied to the cord and is used to raise heavy weights.

 

a wheel or drum fixed on a shaft and turned by a belt, used for the application or transmission of power.

 

Origin: Middle English: from Old French polie, probably from a medieval Greek diminutive of polos 'pivot,axis'

 

Definition of pulley in British and World English dictionary

Optics II

Streaming, 2011, acrylic on paper, 30 x 21 cm

 

 

  Lamp-House , 2011, acrylic on paper, 21 x 30 cm

 

 

Pergola , 2011, acrylic on paper, 21 x 30 cm

 

 

 

Mirror Lights, 2011, acrylic on paper, 18 x 25 cm

 

 

optics [ˈɒptɪks]

n
(Physics / General Physics) (functioning as singular) the branch of science concerned with vision and the generation, nature, propagation, and behaviour of electromagnetic light

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

 

Needle's Eye, BayArt Gallery, Cardiff

Curated by Ruth Solomons

Kim Baker, Louisa Chambers, Lisa McKendrick, Ben Walker

22.09.12-27.10.12

 Private View: Saturday 22nd September 2012

http://www.bayart.org.uk/homepage.html

http://www.scoop.it/t/needle-s-eye

These four artists present four needles' eyes. Kim Baker distils a subject matter of classical and romantic connotations through her sensory interpretation of colour and lyrical form. Her paintings expand this beyond an initial formal approach to gestural expressive brushwork, into an intense grappled world of floral painterly complexity. Ben Walker similarly narrows his source material into an emotional response conveyed through painterly expression. But contrastingly Ben Walker's instinct is to erase all but the most profound and essential details. Louisa Chambers' paintings seem to present an alternative universe where authoritarian structures of technology/science fiction are hijacked by absurd anthropomorphic embellishment. Similarly Lisa McKendrick fills her paintings with quixotic imagery which wilfully resist the laws of physics and elude a readable narrative. For both Lisa McKendrick and Louisa Chambers the needle's eye makes allowable a child-like and intuitive playfulness, opening up a surreal psychological playground in which to set their imaginations free. The four artists presented here are all working with ideas of impossibility. Symbology, gesture, emotion and playfulness push each of their subject sources through the eye of a needle into works of vast connotation and visual richness.

Ruth Solomons 2012

Optics

 

Transmitter, 2011, acrylic on paper, 21 x 30 cm

 

Optics was completed alongside my Vessel series about a year ago in my East London studio. As well as the Alchemist laboratory I was also looking at optical devices such as early camera obscuras, telescopes and microscopes. The majority of these artworks and etchings were created by artists, mathematicians and architects from the Renaissance period such as Albrecht Durer, Leonardo da Vinci and Athanasius Kircher. I was also interested in the visual studies of early microscopes made by lesser known figures from the 17^th and 18^th Century such as Martin Frobenius Ledermüller and Louis Joblot.

 

 

 Rhombus and Rectangular, 2011, acrylic on paper, 30 x 21 cm

 

 

The Golden Projector, 2011, acrylic on paper, 30 x 21 cm

 

 

 

Planet, 2011, acrylic on paper, 25 x 18 cm



Vessels

This series of paintings entitled Vessels were created just before I started the PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education) a year ago. I was researching into Alchemy in particular focusing on the devices that were used by the early chemists to create their liquids and substances. These devices often described in etchings or engravings were symbolic to other mythological references. For example, the womb was represented as a vessel. I was interested in the devices themselves, as magical machines often dreamt up in the early chemist or Alchemists workshop who were aiming to reach higher spiritual planes.

 

 

 

Clock, 2011, oil and acrylic on canvas, 30 x 25 cm 

 

 

Transformation, 2011, oil and acrylic on canvas, 41 x 30 cm

 

 

Hive I, 2011, oil and acrylic on canvas, 41 x 36 cm

 

 

Hive II, 2011, oil and acrylic on canvas, 41 x 36 cm