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Sam Branton
New Collection – Holy Ground

Fragments
Inspired by the frescos and reliefs in remains from ancient Greece and the reconstructions made from them, Branton’s series Holy Ground looks at the aesthetic quality and mystery of the fragment. Branton creates his fragments by composing and painting the entire scene first to look like a lost painting by George Stubbs or Jean Baptiste Oudry.
Branton then carefully chooses the section that will become the fragment, cuts it out and discards the rest. From the fragment, the viewer can reconstruct their own painting and create their own fable from the clues left behind.


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New Collection – Holy Ground”

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Agent X
Joins The Art Circus

Agent X jumped onto the radar when named as a semi-finalist in the 2011 New York Art Marathon, with multiple international honors that rapidly followed including winning Top Entry in the competitive Curious Art-Pie Show at Curious Duke Gallery, London and being named among ‘12 Artists to invest in now’ by New Blood Art Gallery, London.
Currently based in Vancouver, Agent X has exhibited in art meccas around the world including London,Singapore, Los Angeles, Germany, Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco, Spain and Toronto.


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Joins The Art Circus”

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Natalie Toplass
Joins the Art Circus

Natalie started painting professionally shortly after moving to Shropshire in 2003, following her earlier formal training in fine art and later, stage and set design.
She began working on a series of intricate flower and bird portraits, which have been heavily influenced by Georgia O’Keefe, Karl Blossfeldt and early 17th century Dutch painters such as Ambrosius Bosschaert.
Natalie has had several well received exhibitions throughout Great Britain, for example; the Judith Blacklock Gallery in Knightsbridge, several Cork Street galleries in London, Birmingham City Art Gallery and the Royal Academy.


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Joins the Art Circus”

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Alice Gur-Arie Solo Show
Coningsby Gallery 4th – 22nd Feb
Talk with the artist – 18th @ 6:30

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.

Continue reading “Alice Gur-Arie Solo Show
Coningsby Gallery 4th – 22nd Feb
Talk with the artist – 18th @ 6:30″

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Shari Denson & Karen McBride
A Very Insecure Exhibition

Manchester based music photographers Karen McBride and Shari Denson presented a one-night exhibition and book launch in Manchester’s city centre on 22nd February at the Projekts MCR Skateboard park beneath Manchester’s Mancunian Way. Both women are known for their often grainy, atmospheric black and white images of well known bands as well as lesser known local talent.

A Very Insecure Exhibition displayed work dating back to the beginning of the millennium, such as Elbow, I am Kloot, Editors, James Brown, Interpol, Ian Brown, Morrissey, Scissor Sisters, Al Green, amongst other works.
The book was a special double-cover edition produced by UKGiclee and published by Art Circus Books.
Available from UKGiclee.co.uk.

Both Shari and Karen shot primarily on black and white film until around 2010, giving their respective work in such low light situations a distinctive high contrast look. Their paths had crossed in the photo pit at gigs many times since those earlier years, but they were finally brought together last year by their inclusion in ‘Suffragette City’ – an exhibition featuring portraits of 25 of Manchester’s most influential women in music, organised by Manchester Digital Music Archive.

Shari and Karen were interviewed by Manchester music-journalist John Robb.


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A Very Insecure Exhibition”

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Makers of Marks
James Freeman Gallery

Sam Branton’s delicate pencil drawings reference the mezzoprints of English artists such as George Stubbs and John Martin. In his gentle but surreal works, Sam develops the romantic and exotic themes of his source materials, presenting fantastical animals in much the same way as Stubbs depicted Australian fauna, but with the dramatic lighting of Martin’s landscapes.

As he often works in groups of drawings, Sam then produces his series as a book, crossing the line back into the realm of print from yet another angle. In this way Sam plays with the idea of the drawing & print as a connoisseur’s reference material, albeit in the context of an imagined world of surreal absurdity.

Makers of Marks
James Freeman Gallery
08/03/2018 – 31/03/2018

Drawing and printmaking have much shared history and enjoy a deeply interwoven relationship, but even so, contemporary artists still find new ways of making them play off each other. In ‘Makers of Marks’ at the James Freeman Gallery, three artists who experiment with this relationship against a background of classical references: Daniel Hosego, Sam Branton and Jon Braley. Continue reading “Makers of Marks
James Freeman Gallery”