Steve Fricker : Aqua, 80 cm x 65 cm, oil on canvas
Every painting and artwork has a story. Sometimes the story is obvious but more often not so, because we are not always certain of the artists’ intentions behind their creations.
Visual art can be especially challenging and one of the most difficult arts to decipher. Often the stories unfold over time, with our interpretations changing and evolving. We need to decipher the visual language, to trust and to connect to what we are feeling. I’ve come to realise that it takes space, time and silence to truly understand and fully appreciate what we are seeing.
This exhibition explores the storytelling in the artworks, be it the actual works and what they portray, the artist’s intention or the viewer’s interpretation; all perspectives are essential and valid for the existence of the art piece.
Introducing works by Sabina Pieper and Steve Fricker
Sabina Pieper is fascinated with the theatricality of Tudor and Elizabethan portraiture. Sabina explores the modern day icon in her uniquely elaborate style. Using contemporary, and sometimes macabre, imagery Sabina counterbalances the period theme, setting these strong female subjects in a timeless realm.
The central figures - powerful women, keenly wrought - invite company, but share the space with creatures and objects from the exotic to the ordinary. These women are not set in a certain time frame but exist eternally. Her unique images invite repeated viewing; inviting and yet challenging, calling and yet creating distance. Analogous of the journey into the unknown, the eternal quest for knowledge or fulfilment, Sabina’s work offers us a compelling vision of the beauty and depth in us all.
Sabina Pieper : Lady Ramure, 160 cm x 120 cm, orignal collage and painting
Steve Fricker's work is essentially concerned with the relationship between, and the meaning of objects, subjects and people.
Scrap metal, old photographs and found objects, often collected from the beaches around Sussex, are arranged and rearranged until a connecting narrative emerges. The past is preserved and connects to the future through the things we treasure and the emotions they evoke. The intangible values they present act as containers of remembrance with experience crystallised in the form of objects that trigger our memories, giving the object life - a soul of its own and taking on a meaning beyond physical form.
The juxtaposition of found objects, bringing with them as they do, their own past, along with our recognition and recollection, creates resonance, tensions and reverberations, like actors on a stage.
Both artists use their mediums to embellish and story tell in a theatrical and magical way. I look forward to sharing your thoughts about their works.
Also on show will be collections from the gallery’s regular stable of artists