Architecture of Landscape

[df-subtitle] 2 Feb – 25 Feb 2017[/df-subtitle]

Architecture of Landscape is a dystopian view of hope. Dysfunctional structures on a blighted utopian dream.

Scaffolding on a vast desolate horizon; measureless assemblages attached to no building. Hybrid constructions and astroturf floating across a landscape of surfaces.

Ladders to the moon; steps ascending towards an indeterminate promise of destiny. A reach for decompression of an acute obstructive obstacle.

The scale of eccentric grandeur in Architecture of Landscape is palpable, like a drumming heartbeat pounding the head. The work of Alison Hand and Isabel Young at ARTHOUSE1 presents, not the usual dystopian views of a decaying and decadent society, but an unpredictable future of an incomplete architectural masterplan. This is a distorted vision of dreams leading to a fantasy of desires and improbable aspirations.

These are the gardens built before the architecture they are made for has been conceived, a surreal space of endless layers. This is when fantasy and time merge, flaking off from time’s assumed arrow, constructing on an imaginary threshold something that is incomprehensible, unusable, and absurd in its monumental honour of the dream.

Hand’s “work is concerned with the representation of landscape, and narratives of improvement. Regeneration in particular throws up new, peripheral kinds of landscapes which articulate a desire to develop, improve, to transform. Hand searches for the gaps between the promise and the reality, where the site is characterised by fantasy, displacement, and absurd juxtaposition. Signifiers from disparate genres are flung together, perspectives are condensed and elongated, and previous layers rise up to confront new layers.”

In Young’s work, “architecture and landscape architecture are addressed as a liminal experience of space where boundary itself becomes the central theme. Imagery pauses around doorways, entrances and openings marking the threshold as the most powerful point of friction in architecture…. Ladders, steps and bridges feature as leitmotifs inferring the occupation of space. These entities physically and metaphorically connect one space to another making the inaccessible accessible. Suspended in darkness are planets, moons and suns that inhabit the paintings as distant landscapes with the potential for colonisation.”

Together, these works witness the limits of expectation; the limits of reason; the limits of what potential can produce. Architecture of Landscape is itself a boundary on an unbounded entitlement to improve.

 

 

Alison Hand

Alison Hand’s work is concerned with the representation of landscape, and narratives of improvement. Regeneration in particular throws up new, peripheral kinds of landscapes which articulate a desire to develop, improve, to transform. She searches for the gaps between the promise and the reality, where the site is characterised by fantasy, displacement, and absurd juxtaposition. Signifiers from disparate genres are flung together, perspectives are condensed and elongated, and previous layers rise up to confront new layers.

Painting decodes these new sites, collaging together elements of transition and deconstruction, incorporating artifice and illusion, and distorting spatial relationships. A language of hard materiality and surface interacts with illusory depth and diaphanous layers of transparent paint, this layering analogous to the deep palimpsest of one place upon another, surface upon surface. Acrylic and oil slide against spray paint and slicks of gloss, creating differing velocities and interweaving a building site topography with the structures and follies of classical landscape painting.

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Isabel Young

Isabel Young is an artist and lecturer living and practicing in London. She graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2002 with a Masters in Fine Art. Since that time she has exhibited extensively across the United Kingdom and internationally in New York, Ireland, Japan and Thailand. She has had solo exhibitions in London and also at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle where she showcased a unique body of work investigating our relationship to animals. Between 2010 and 2012 Young undertook a Masters in Landscape Architecture at the University of Greenwich for which she was awarded distinction. While she continues to practice as a fine artist, landscape architecture continues to be the primary influence on her work

Young’s work has won many awards including the Gilchrist Fisher Award for Landscape Painting, The Gordon Luton Award for Fine Art from the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers, the Basel H. Alkazzi Travel Scholarship to New York and the Jerwood Contemporary Painters. Most recently she was granted an award from the Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust to develop her practice and produce her most recent body of artwork.

Alongside her career as an artist she has lectured in fine art for over a decade at some of the world’s leading centres for art and design education. She has held posts at the University for the Creative Arts, the University of Gloucestershire and Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London) and has acted as visiting lecturer to many other institutions.

[button link=”http://isabelyoung.wixsite.com/isabel-young” size=”large” icon=”fa-globe” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”b70900″ textcolor=”ffffff”]Isabel Young’s Website[/button]

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Architecture of Landscape / Alison Hand & Isabel Young
2 February – 25 February 2017
Preview 2 February 2017, 6.30 pm – 8.30pm
Open to public during exhibitions Thursday to Sunday 3pm – 7pm or by appointment
077131 89249 or email info@arthouse1.co.uk
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ArtHouse1

ARTHOUSE1 believe what makes Arthouse1 gallery unique is the intimate space it offers within a domestic environment, offering great opportunities for individuals and groups interested in furthering their careers or making a statement beyond the ordinary.

The founder, artist Rebecca Fairman, has substantial experience in advertising, marketing and design, utilising these skills to promote the gallery and artists involved.

Opportunities

ARTHOUSE1 offers a fantastic opportunity for both emerging and mid-career artists to participate in ambitious programmes of exhibitions and events. The light open plan exhibition area is over 700 sq. ft, comprising 29m of white wall hanging space. A contemporary space which succinctly merges old with new. If you are an artist or a curator, and would like to put forward a proposal, please email your proposal along with images and full CV in a pdf format to info@arthouse1.co.uk

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London Bridge rail and tube – 12 mins walk via Tooley & Bermondsey St.

Borough Tube – 10 mins walk via Long Lane

Buses : 78, 1, 188, 42, RV1

Car parking metres in Crimscott St.

Free parking after 6.30pm & weekends

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