OPEN COUNTRY

Motorcade/FlashParade is proud to present:

OPEN COUNTRY

Solo show of paintings by Brendan Lancaster, winner M/FP National Open Painting Competition 2011

Private View 19th April - 7pm to late

Exhibition continues: Sat 20, Sun 21 and Fri 26, Sat 27, Sun 28: 12 - 5pm

"Here seems to be as good a place to start as anywhere – to use shapes and marks that are ready to hand, not over-thought, just a starting point. Then let the painting develop. New images pile up, create new versions of now. Deleuze describes art as cultural deterritorialisation, an undoing of the rules, and for me, painting, however old the language, however borrowed the vocabulary, is full, still, of possibility. Each work is an exploration in an open field of action, where we must create and find the new.

When I work I don’t set out to create a particular image, rather, it’s a state of working I’m hoping to get to, a sense of creative departure that I’m hoping to achieve. I like Francis Bacon’s statement, that to get the feeling for reality into a painting the artist mustn’t know what they are doing. For me too, if anything does work, it works ‘from that moment when consciously I don’t know what I’m doing.’ I chase after that way of working each time I paint".

“Lancaster’s energetic intimate paintings are at the same time instantly recognisable and strange. At first sight they deliver a soft emotional blow, then you wonder at their immediacy”

Ruth Piper, The SearchersContemporary gallery

“Lancaster’s work floats over the Modernist project, with a playful eye to the exasperating complexities of the contemporary.” 

Patrick Brandon, artist

Brendan Lancaster’s work has been included in the John Moores Painting Prize 2012, Crash Open 2012, Motorcade/Flashparade National Open 2012 and Exeter Phoenix Contemporary Open 2012.

                                         


                                   

                                         
                                                                           
                        

BRACE

  

BRACE

Private View: Friday 5th April 7pm to late

Exhibition continues Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th, 12 to 5pm

Bringing together eight undergraduate artists, to work in pairs, Brace is an exhibition showcasing collaborative works across a range of media. Working from such diverse theoretical platforms as extended painting, architectural intervention, and institutional critique, these artists have set aside their differences in order to explore their practices outside of themselves.

In order to participate in Brace, each artist must discard any feelings of preciousness towards their own work. Individual practices and aesthetic preferences will be compromised as ideas are relinquished to the greater project. The issue of who came up with what must be set aside for the benefit of the project and the viewer.

Working in four pairs, the artists are grouped according to their practice: painting, media, sculpture, and installation. Brace is an attempt at finding out whether two heads really are better than one.

Charlie Cousins builds narratives through interventions with found imagery; using analogue photography to hint at the intrinsic value that we imbue within cultural artefacts. In a digital world saturated with imagery of questionable origin and authenticity, the work reminds us of the photograph as an object in its own right, layered with psychological narrative and nostalgic association. Esme Rogers-Evans is interested in the relationship she has with the materials used during the creative process and how that relationship reveals itself in the completed work. A secondary, but equally important aspect of the work is the interaction between it and the viewer.

Immersive in their nature, the works of EllaCunliffe are, at their heart, about the moment of encounter. Her material interventions break down the physical distance between art and viewer. Placing the experience at centre stage, her works often alter the way people move through a space - in this sense, Ella’s works invoke a bodily response before an intellectual one. Georgie Winfrey is also concerned with altering spatial perception, in such a way that her work questions the very institutions in which they are situated. Her practice considers how social and institutional forces operate to mediate and even control perception and behaviour. By using materials imbued with cultural significance, she seeks to subliminally confront both the viewer’s and her own preconceptions about the way things are.

Colour is one thing that art, design, advertising, industry, and commerce all share. Desire, aspiration and taste are also entwined in these different sectors of the ‘cultural’ and the ‘commercial’. Inextricably linked with tastefulness, colour has the potential to subvert and mislead meaning, by modifying the functionality of the familiar, facilitating a re-definition of terms. Colour allows meaning to be lost and the role of aesthetic to take over; it acts as a mask that conceals the true identity of what lies beneath. Colour allows for humour to be accepted within the idea or action. It mocks but at the same time complements its surroundings. By DafyydSamuel and Joseph Turnbull

In a world smothered by popular culture and running at a digital pace, IdaHolbrook and Joseph Nicoll attempt to reflect the ongoing modern preoccupation with the problem of reconciling one's individuality. Acknowledging their position as consumers of the visual, their works reveal a sense of escapism borrowed from the computer screen and advertising: Joseph finds consolation through personalizing modern day icons, whilst Ida recognizes the impact of new digital technologies with trepidation. Seeking to create situations in which the viewer must remain partially unaware of reality in order to engage with the work, Ida invokes a sense of spatial precariousness as objects and forms are broken down and reassembled. 

TRAWLER

TRAWLER

a MadeScapes ^ installation

Private view March 22^nd 6-10pm

Exhibition continues: Saturday 23 and Sunday 24,  12 – 5pm

From an electro-tropical internet basecamp, the lone user trawls the webs of reference, collecting and filtering vast tracts of data into some semblance of self.

MadeScapes invites you to witness the trawler in all his glory as we make our first foray into combining our installation work with performance. From a broadband-enabled mock-desert island, a solitary blogger will navigate through our collective online sketchbook.

Multiple screens and projections will reveal the trawler’s behaviour in a most public fashion, establishing and eradicating myriad mini-narratives along the way. As he makes his selections, themes will inevitably be repeated and images and video clips revisited, revealing his personal preferences as he creates his online identity.

“The trawler inhabits the gaps between original thought and plagiarism, where someone else said something that loosely approximated what he was already thinking. The trawler is the latest product of an age when quotation provides the dominant creative outlet; he occupies a space where consumption of everything is faster, easier, and more affordable. The Trawler self-curates and makes himself available for consumption by other users.”

Excerpt from The Trawler, by Trevor H Smith

MadeScapes ^

MadeScapes is a Bristol-based collaborative art practice comprised of five artists, one graphic designer, and one writer. Established in 2011, MadeScapes has exhibited across the UK and in Europe.

Drawing on individual and collective experience in a rapidly evolving digital world, MadeScapes creates installations which feed from and into the individual practices of its members, whose varied theoretical approaches converge on the common themes of digital culture, glitch aesthetic, and the post-human experience.

Traditional media such as painting and carpentry are placed in parallel with glitch portraiture, text on social media platforms, and looped blog videos, to create a unique visual experience.

MadeScapes is committed to enabling interaction between the audience, the artists and their works, and the spaces and communities in which the work is shown.

MadeScapes ^