The Coningsby Gallery is pleased to announce its first exhibition of emerging artist Alice Gur-Arie,
on view from Tuesday, February 4th to Saturday, February 22nd
Plus… ,Conversation with the Artist Alice Gur-Arie 6:30pm on Tuesday February 18th
Alice Gur-Arie first appeared on the art scene eight years ago, when she was nominated for two series of Icelandic works in the Terry O’Neill Tag Photography Prize competition, Drama in the Fog, and Love on the Rocks. A year later, another work from Iceland, Tapestry, was longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize. Drama in the Fog has not been shown since its debut at the Embassy of Iceland in London, in Alice’s solo exhibition Works from The Iceland Trilogy, and we are pleased to have it at the Coningsby Gallery.
Since then, Alice has focused on developing a distinctive creative style that combines her
own photography from around the world with digital painting. Inspired by the natural world, landscape, seascape and wildlife images dominate her portfolio, ranging in style from bold saturated abstracts to soft, textured tones. This mixed media approach has garnered additional attention: The Romantic, from the series Becoming Harlequin, was long listed for The Secret Art Prize, and Heraldry, also from Becoming Harlequin, was a featured entry to the Gemini Art Prize. Becoming Harlequin can be seen in Spring and Other Reasons.
Based on the concept of “seeing”, she invites the viewer to replace the window through which they see the world, with a lens that interprets visual experience into something that is at once familiar and foreign. Treating a photograph as her canvas, images are repainted by hand digitally with a “brush”, sometimes in layers, sometimes pixel by pixel.
She explains: Because my process uses photography as well as painting, the realm of possibility is a continuum: at one end the work can look very much like a photograph; at the other, the work can look extremely painterly – highly textured, and with visible “brushstrokes”. In the middle, where the two art forms converge, the work is a unique blend that asks the viewer to question whether what they see is a photograph or a painting. It is this “sweet spot” that I find so alluring.
What is critical, though, she continues, is understanding that my work is not about digital manipulation, but about re-imagining experience.
And this is exactly what Spring and Other Reasons offers: the saturated, glowing lilypad leaves of Overture, the dotted Mediterranean twilight sky; the intriguing, Comedia del Arte Becoming Harlequin, and soft textures of Tapestry’s winter air… this is an exhibition for the senses, one which will appeal, as Alice says, to the head and the heart.
The limited edition mixed media images in Spring and Other Reasons come from Portugal, France, Italy, Israel and Germany. All works in the exhibition are available for purchase.
Alice Gur-Arie – Awards / Recognition
Featured Artist, Gemini Art Prize 2019
Artist of the Week, Tagsmart Nov 2018
Long listed, Secret Art Prize 2017
Top Ten Art List CultureLabel 2016
Shortlisted, Bridgeman Studio Award 2016
Artist of the Month, Bridgeman Images April 2015
Long listed, Aesthetica Art Prize 2014
Nominated, Terry O’Neill Tag Photography Award 2013
Winner, Royal Ontario Museum, Smithsonian Campaign Design 1985
NOW: Represented by Emerge Contemporary