Q&A with Lex Thomas

Lex Thomas, born in 1972, gained a BA degree in Social Science at the University of Greenwich before studying Fine Art for three years at the University of the West of England followed by a Postgraduate Diploma at Chelsea Collage of Art. She has been shortlisted for the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, the Rising Stars Prize and won third place at the Woolgather Art Prize.

Is the medium you use more important than the subject matter/message?

I’m open to a multidisciplinary approach as there are various ways to explore the same themes, but paint is, for me, an endlessly fascinating medium. I find the glossy buttery substance of paint very beguiling and the origin of pigments and the alchemical recipes and processes involved a kind of wonder. I like getting my hands dirty; grinding resin, making glaze. But ideally I’m interested in a marriage of ideas and process. I find it interesting to draw attention to both the painting as representation as well as its physicality and the act of painting. These ideas are integral to my work. I like the Bacon quote: ‘the paint is the image and the image is the paint’. You can’t avoid acknowledging the history of painting, whether it’s embedded in the work or tackled head on. It’s another of its appealing complexities. Continue reading “Q&A with Lex Thomas” →

Travis Louie in ‘Monsters on Their Day Off’
at Roq La Rue, Seattle

April 12th to May 4th 2013

Travis Louie’s hypnotic “portraiture” is compelling for its blend of the hyper realistic with the blatantly unreal. Fantastical creatures gaze out from paintings so technically refined (using transparent layers of acrylic paint over a tight graphite drawing on a smooth flat surface) that they look uncannily like old photographs. Adding to the discomfiting presence these animal/monster like chimeras have are the human expressions- even if the creature in the paintings looks a bit bizarre, it also looks spookily familiar as well. Often in his work Louie seeks to create mythological ancestors…long-lost “relatives” captured in Victorian cabinet card/ tint type images.

His own interest in Noir imagery, German Expressionism, personal dream imagery, (not to mention B movie monsters!) as well as his recent discovery of old photographs of “human oddities” that were not from sideshow photographs, but rather photographs that documented that person’s “normal life” (i.e. the famous photo of John Merrick (The Elephant Man) dressed in formal evening wear for a night at the theater) all combined in this latest series of works to create an incredible series of portraits that you may just recognize elements of your own family members in!

For more info please visit Roq La Rue Gallery

Tom Howse at the High House Gallery, Oxfordshire

11th April – 28th April 2013

Tom Howse’s paintings are a mythological investigation into the sources of understanding and the quests we take to comprehend. He sees a distinct gulf between the world’s knowledge and his own understanding – the paintings being products of absurd and inadequate attempts to make sense of the world. Howse monumentalises figures or objects to bestow them with a greater power, for example in the ‘Big Faces’ works his figures act not only as a surrogate omnipotence but also as a self-admonishing reconciliation for his perceived inadequacies. Howse’s paintings evolve on the canvas provoking questions and uncertainty. Colour and paint work as a language to evolve an image beyond a physical depiction to produce exciting, mysterious, raw and primal work.

For more info please visit the High House Gallery.

Art Circus Spotlight
‘Rafael, The long walk ahead while looking
back in disbelief’ by Miguel Laino

Rafael was one of a series of black and white portraits entitled “Memory”. The portraits represent faces of people from the past, with whom I have not had direct contact for many years in some cases. The series explores the nature of memory in general, and visual memory in particular. What interested me, was how you can recall faces of people from your childhood in dreams with vivid and detailed clarity. And yet it is hard to have a clear image in your mind in the waking state, and even harder to paint the image from that memory.

On a deeper level, this is an examination of the interplay between the conscious and subconscious mind in the creative process and in the memory faculty, as well as the process of relating to people in general. In many ways and on many levels, there always seems to be some kind of disconnect between the image of something and it’s underlying nature or reality. So in a portrait done from memory, the question becomes: “Which part of the image is a reflection of the nature of the subject, and which part is a projection from the artist’s memory or imagination?”

See more of Miguel’s paintings here

Pedro Reyes in ‘Disarm’ at the Lisson Gallery, London

27th March to 4th May 2013

Pedro Reyes creates musical instruments from firearms, including revolvers, shot-guns and machine-guns, which were crushed by tanks and steamrollers to render them useless. These were offered to the artist by the Mexican government following their confiscation and subsequent public destruction in the city of Ciudad, Juarez.

For Reyes the process of transforming weapons into objects of positive utility “… was more than physical. It’s important to consider that many lives were taken with these weapons; as if a sort of exorcism was taking place, the music expelled the demons they held, as well as being a requiem for the lives lost.”

For more info please visit Lisson Gallery

Sophie Wiltshire in ‘Forming Words’
at the Flow Gallery, London

Forming Words is based on how form and structure can be inspired by text. Flow has asked selected artists to create new work based on a piece of writing of their choice, from poetry to a letter to lyrics. Whether it is the shapes, lines and curves which letters create that inspire the work, as in vibrant wall pieces by Debbie Smyth that motivate the work. Or simply the fluidity of the writing, artists exploring this theme express the diverse approaches and outcomes this one theme can manifest.

Artists include: Jonathan Boyd, Gary Breeze, Tabea Dürr, Clare Goddard, Clare Hillerby, Mimi Joung, Alyssa Dee Krauss, Aino Kajaniemi, Hanne Mannheimer, Susanne Matsché, Enya Moore, Cecilia Levy, Bethan Lloyd Worthington, Matthew Raw, Debbie Smyth, Jessica Turrell, Ingeborg Vandamme, Sophie Wiltshire, Buddug Wyn Humphreys.

On Show until 17th May 2013. For more info please visit the Flow Gallery

Art Circus Spotlight
‘Time Capsule’ by Jana Emburey

Jana Emburey Time Capsule Aluminium coated with copper, 20 x 16 x 10 cm, 2012

When attempting to analyse what time actually is and also how different cultures perceive it, one comes across the strangest ideas and possibilities. I have been exploring this concept for over a year now, using as a medium mainly sculpture and printmaking. This particular piece is the 3rd “Time Capsule” I have made and there is likely to be more in the near future. This one is made from aluminium coated with copper. It has been hand cut with a saw and modeled into its shape. It represents a pod, an egg, a womb, in which life of some sort was created, developed and finally released. It’s a metaphorical time machine, able to transport one to different stages of life.

See more of Jana’s work here

Ravi Zupa’s ‘Colour Deficient’
at The Outsiders, Newcastle

5th April 2013 to 4th May 2013

Colour Deficient examines not only the richness of colour, but also the hole left in our modern lives by a lack of spirituality.“Iʼm decidedly atheist, but feel tied to mythology,” says the artist, “and the show is partly about that conflict.” Raviʼs works are an amalgam of graphite, coloured pencil, india and coloured ink, latex and acrylic paint, watercolour, oil paint, chalk pastel, relief-block print (cut from traffic cones), silk screen and collaged paper. That the majority is painted in Raviʼs hand brings cohesion to the myriad contrasting styles, images and ages present in the pictures.

For more info please visit The Outsiders

Natasha Peel in ‘New Order, British Art Now’
at the Saatchi Gallery, London

The World’s Local Nomad, Heat-treated perspex (size and colour taken from HSBC London building façade) and vinyl-covered plinth (colour selected from branding material) 150 x 130 x 100 cm, 2012

‘In this piece the words ‘local’ and ‘nomad’ are intentionally juxtaposed to reveal the contradiction of the logic of global capitalist expansion as the endorsement of an extraterritorial colonialism. The colours and utopian slogans of corporate branding bring to mind the reductive aesthetics of constructivism and suprematism, which rehearse the institutional fate of the avant-garde.’

Natasha’s sculpture features in New Order, British Art Now at the Saatchi gallery with 17 other UK-based young artists, from 26 April – 9 June 2013.

Yinka Shonibare’s ‘POP!’
at the Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

16 March 2013 – 20 April 2013

This exhibition of all new works focuses on the corruption, excess and debauchery that have in part led to the current economic crisis. With characteristic wit and critique, Yinka Shonibare explores the contemporary worship of luxury goods and the behaviour of the banking industry while referencing well known iconography and art historical homage – most notably in his creation of a large tableau based on Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’.

For more info please visit the Stephen Friedman Gallery

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