Espacio Nomadic - In Constant Motion - a-n The Artists Information Company

Venue: Menier Gallery
Starts: Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Ends: Saturday, February 25, 2012
Address: 51 Southwark Street London SE1 1RU
Location: London

In Constant Motion, a ‘nomadic’ group of 22 artists from the Espacio Gallery Project return to the Menier Gallery 51 Southwark Street London SE1 1RU from 14-25 February 2012. A community movement of 100+ artists seeking their own permanent gallery space in London but in the meantime this latest Espacio Nomadic show celebrates their optimism about life, love and everything else with vibrant new work from 22 of the Gallery Project’s artists. The show will be open daily 11am-6pm from Tuesday 14 February with late opening on Friday 17 February (to 8pm) and closing at 5pm on Saturday 25 February. A private view will be held on Thursday 16 February from 6pm to 9.00pm. For this show the Espacio Project is delighted to have live music from 4-piece chill-out band, Toy, who will play a specially commissioned live set on Friday 24 February from 6pm to 9.00pm. Espacio Gallery artists participating in the Espacio Nomadic exhibition are Valerie G. Montgomery, Lesley Croxford, Terry Beard, Ann Kopka, Nick Hazzard, Zelda Eady, Liz Whiteman Smith, Ralph Overill, Tania Beaumont, Catherine Field, Nina Harma, Justyna Szpygiel, Julie Eccles, Julia Tester, Judith Bieletto, Laura Bello, Tom Allan, Ana Cockerill, Juli Jana, Furrah Syed, Rosalind Smith, Renee Rilexie. Further information please contact show organiser, Renee Rilexie on 07947 246479 or email [email protected]

Ann Kopka

Ann Kopka is a visual artist and curator. She has exhibited her work in art galleries, museums, hospitals, churches, libraries and non-conventional spaces in London, the UK, Denmark, Germany, Italy and the USA. Ann’s work is held in private collections in the UK, France, Spain, USA and Australia. Ann’s work has been used to inspire students of all ages, from primary school children to art college students and has been the subject of GCSE art projects. She has also participated in collaborative exhibitions with jazz musicians, poets, writers, architects and designers. Ann’s art practice encompasses painting, 2D and 3D mixed media, digital art and installation. Her current interests are informed by her fascination with the relationships between geometry, design and architecture in both the urban landscape and natural world. With a visual emphasis on exploring the relationships between structure and scale, repetition and pattern, colour and rhythm, her artworks hover between the representation of recognisable images and the non-traditional formal repetition of shapes and structures prevalent in abstract art. Ann’s paintings ‘grow’ through the subtle application of multiple layers of vivid acrylic colour. Colour is employed not to be representational but to convey light and energy, emphasise the circulation of movement and bind the network of structures together into a coherent picture. The slow buildup of vibrant saturated surfaces results in paintings that have an illusion of depth sometimes with distinctive three dimensional qualities contradicting the defining flatness of abstract art and yet in art historical terms allude to analytical cubism, constructivism, op-art and geometric abstraction. The processes of deconstructing and reconstructing subject matter to articulate concepts of space also resonates with Ann’s digital artwork where subject matter is taken out of its original context and re-imagined alluding to a further interpretation of abstraction. Ann’s mixed media and 3D artwork engages with the research, process and transformation of discarded everyday ephemera and disregarded disposable objects of little or no intrinsic value. Through the concept of recycling and ‘making something out of nothing’ Ann seeks to draw attention to the throwaway nature of consumer society and sustainability, questioning our perception of its value systems. Ann studied Fine Art at Central St Martins College of Art and Design and The City Lit London. She graduated from the Open University with a First Class Honours Degree where she studied The Practices and Debates of Modern Art. She has studied Museum Curating at The Tate Modern and contemporary curating at The City Lit. Ann has organised and curated several temporary exhibitions at the Heath Robinson Museum London. Ann is a member of The Free Painters and Sculptors, an independent artists co-operative and charity and also The New Constructivists artists organisation. Ann is a former member of Harrow Open Studios and the dissolved Brent Artists Resource.