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Rodeo

by Gemma Lowe

I am interested in the ability of painting to present something beyond ideologies and belief systems. For me, painting has the potential to transmute. It creates possibilities for new explorations and interrogations. I imagine the surface I paint on as a container or vessel. Something that has the potential to cultivate life, develop new forms and creates a narrative within the chaos of the paint.
I begin by using paint loosely to encourage a game of chance, always trying to push its boundaries whilst responding personally to the images I am examining.
 
I start by playing with form and negative and positive space through a method of inclusion and expulsion of certain figures often from memory or rapid sketches and notes. By experimenting with new materials and methods, I hope to interrogate the inherent nature of colour through my use of paint and to develop fluency with different techniques; thereby challenging my hypothesis of painting and producing exciting work that lends itself to further questions and ideas.
 
Through this process emerges a recurring motif and my painting often culminates in a single all-encompassing form which is not necessarily to do with the original subject, but which alludes to an ambiguous idea of truth. It is an ultimate motif, a universal shape. It is in a head, a horse, a fist, it is a cow and it is a table, a shape that conveys a performance or a gesture. It is an instigator that appears everywhere and is malleable and changeable. I have a fascination for the possible new forms that may come to exist.
Born 2 Aug 1982, Manchester, UK

Education

2012-14            MA Painting, Royal College of Art
2002-5              BA Fine Art, Sheffield Hallam University

Selected Group Exhibitions

2012                  Animal House, Cephalopod, London
2011                  Salon Art Prize, Matt Roberts Arts, London
2011                  Correos, Galeria Progresso, Porto Alegre, Brazil        
2010                  Repeat and Reprise, East Gallery, London
2009                  Telling Tales, Mayfair Library, London
2009                  State of Flux, Soup Gallery, London
2009                  Staff Art Exhibition, The National Gallery, London
2009                  Vision and the Void, The Others Gallery, London
2009                  Absorb Arts Show, London
2008                  B-Liners, James Taylor Building, London
2005                  The Great Art Show, Sheffield