lastman3

4th July – 2nd August 2014

Opening Reception:
Thursday 3 July, 6:30 – 8:30

The Art Circus is very pleased to announce our first curated group show in collaboration with the James freeman Gallery. Artists on show will include Vasilis Avramidis, Christopher Gee, Miguel Laino, Hyunjeong Lim, Mackie, Tom Shedden, Eleanor Watson.

Change is one of the few certainties in life. After death and taxes, the only thing we can be sure of is that nothing stays the same. As such, it begs the question: what happens when we’re no longer around?

Taking Mary Shelley’s apocalyptic novel The Last Man (1826) as its inspiration, this show explores the mysterious absence of humankind from the spaces they once inhabited. The ecological concerns of Shelley’s novel bring to mind: if mankind disappeared, would the natural world be free to reclaim what belonged to it? Visitors thereby get to take the place of Verney, The Last Man, in becoming the sole observer of an eerie lost world.

Seven painters come together to create this atmospheric exhibition. The unnerving images of Christopher Gee and Miguel Laino create a haunting, ominous presence, as if even before the disappearance there were clues, portents and signs. The paintings of Eleanor Watson and Mackie depict abandoned landscapes and structures like solitary markers, with empty rooms seen through external walls creating a sense of dereliction. In Vasilis Avramidis’s luscious works, green mossy hills emerge in the black of night from a subterraneous realm and morph into arms, fingers and heads. The Bosch-like theme is continued in Hyunjeong Lim’s drawings of twisted landscapes that depict a contemporary Golgotha through a cacophony of comic-book images. It is left to Tom Shedden’s paintings of an Elysian future to suggest a counterbalance of harmony with the new elements.

2Vasilis Avramidis Keepsake 40 60 cm, oil on canvas

12. MoonChristopher Gee

???????????????????????????????Miguel Laino Stepping across the edge of the in-between 180 cm x 150 cm, acrylic on canvas

L0005365Hyunjeong Lim Landscape with Cones 101.6 x 101.6cm, pastel pencil, acrylic on canvas

mackieMackie Stag, Hare and Hounds 14” x 18”, Oil on Canvas

L0002878Tom Shedden Untitled 6 60cm x 70cm, acrylic on canvas

Happening, 105x80cm, oil on canvas, 2014Eleanor Watson Happening 105 x 80 cm, oil on canvas

The Last Man opens on Thursday 3 July, 6:30 – 8:30pm. For more details and previews contact the James Freeman Gallery.