 Zoe Walker: Portable Paradise I, 1996 / 2001 C-type print on aluminium, 122 x 152 cm / 48 x 60 in. Now Showing IV Christopher Bucklow, Gordon Cheung, Susan Derges, Katie Pratt, The Royal Art Lodge, Zoë Walker Christopher Bucklow's latest book "If This Be Not I", published by the British Museum and The Wordsworth Trust, 2004 (book), essays by Marina Warner, Adam Phillips, Roger Malbert, Introduction by James Putnam, reflects the highly intellectual and introspective nature of the artist's practice. Bucklow moves between painting, photography and writing using the different mediums to explore the many aspects of his emotional and intellectual enquiry. The "Tetrarch" and "Guest" series act as a continual reference point for his work; merging painting and photography, self and others. Gordon Cheung has had a phenomenal year with exhibitions at the Chinese Art Centre in Manchester, Bloomberg, London, Houldsworth, London and the Nunnery, London. He was also nominated this year for the Prospect Drawing Prize and the BOC emerging artist award. In his most recent works, collage, print, drawing and spray paint work together to produce intricate fantasies of techno-sublime landscapes. Susan Derges' new work develops her use of photogram to create complex compositions of sky and water. In her most recent pieces we see her return to frogspawn in earliest state. The shimmering cells of the spawn mix with the under image of the night sky making the bejewelled shapes look like celestial bodies. Braches, leaves and moons appear to float on the surface of the glossy star-scapes. Katie Pratt's "Saschekewan" is one of her most intricate and complex paintings to date. Weaving textured splashes of brilliant white paint with a delicate beading of green brush marks, the piece combines the decorative and visceral elements of her "Pell Mell" series with references to maps and organic forms seen in her earlier work. Recent works will be on show at the Wexner Centre for Contemporary Art Ohio, 30 January - 27 April, 2005. In their recent collaborations The Royal Art Lodge (Michael Dumontier, Marcel Dzama and Neil Farber) use images appropriated from television, advertising and illustration with paint encrusted surfaces and naïve collage to create highly original and spontaneous works. The Lodge will be showing later this year and the newly designed Leisure Club Mogadishni, Copenhagen. Zoe Walker's "Portable Paradise" depicts the artist inside a giant bubble that she fashioned out of sheets of polythene. Walker's playful, optimistic, but over-simplified conception of Paradise collides, in these glossy photographs, with advertising panaceas that offer the consumer a "better" life. Walker embraces forms of communication and ways in which conventionality can be challenged. Latter this month Walker will launch "How the Universe Sang Itself into Being", a pirate radio station (Celestial Radio 87.7 FM) from a mirror-plated boat off the Essex Coast (near Bradwell Nuclear power station). Exhibition: 15 July - 8 September 2004 (The gallery will be closed during August, to make an appointment during this time contact the gallery) Gallery hours: Tue-Fri 10am - 5.30pm, Sat 10.30am - 4pm Houldsworth Gallery 33-34 Cork Street UK-London W1S 3NQ Telephone +44 (0)20 7434 2333 Fax +44 (0)20 7434 3636 Email gallery@houldsworth.co.uk www.houldsworth.co.uk |
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