'TRACES' - A Group Exhibition curated by James Byrne
Reuben Colley Fine Arts
17th May 2014 - 7th June 2014
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"This exhibition consists of work selected from the Birmingham Artspace Studios. The studios are located in an industrial building in Aston and have eleven studio places in all. They are currently occupied primarily by painters. The studio units were built, financed and run by artists on a non profit making basis. The whole enterprise is artist led.
The theme for the show largely presented itself. My initial idea was simply to make a selection of work that I liked and would represent the range of work practices. As I chose work and started to put it together I noticed a unifying theme that I had not been aware of when seeing work on a piecemeal basis. All the work, though individual in content and methodology, seemed to have evocations of time passing and reference to memory and its erosion, both personal and collective, and how this erosion can somehow be registered and marked by the act of painting. We see reference made to the nostalgia of faded technology where objects can be condensers of memory of carriers of metaphor. There are evocations of faded utopias, afterglows of childhood, faces and people salvaged from forgotten photographs and looking at us afresh. The city features too, warmth of recognition but acknowledgement of the passing of an age or triggering that moment when we have absentmindedly watched a passing car and wondered but then forgotten. Landscapes also feature, silent shape shifting, afterglow stillness. Childhood toys make an appearance but subvert the gender stereotypes in poignant and amusing fashion. Then there is of course the stuff of paint itself, fast slow, thick thin, layered time."
James Byrne. May 2014
