- Venue
- Oriel Canfas Gallery and Studios
- Location
- Wales
Freya Dooley | James Green | Ellie Young
The exhibition lends its title from Williams Blake’s gnomic verse “Do what you will, this world’s a fiction and everything in it made up of contradiction”. Using this as a starting point, this three-person show references theme of fictitious narrative sources, cinema, television, art history and literature.
The show interweaves the work of each artist, moving from one artist to the next to create an interwoven tapestry of ideas. Themes are explored, fade away as you move on then picked up again as you encounter the artists work again. This creates a more holistic approach across the show, sometimes at the expense of letting relationships form between the artists body of work.
Freya Dooley’s subtle works examine ideas of experience, and how they are documented, revealing the discrepancies between event and its recording.
History, both public and personal is written through a process of documentation, first and second hand accounts that are remembered, repeated, and re-written. These documents are ultimately selective and the line between fact and misinformation often becomes blurred.
Repetition is a constant theme throughout the works, in Yellow series, a series of muted images present everyday scenes and objects, punctuated by flashes of yellow. The images are pared down, the surroundings of the yellow object are hinted at, rather than fully shown. The repetition of yellow creates a familiarity within the looping journey through scenes that are both sensory and unique.
Dooley’s text piece Foot-off-the ground notes no.1-17 derives from selective texts from Stevie Smiths 1936 book Novel on Yellow Paper. Smith’s text is structured as the typing of a bored secretary, re-telling stories, gossip and remembering childhood memories. Dooley’s selective re-presentation of the text reveals an interesting word play, exploring the ambiguity of language and the written document.
James Green’s paintings and collages are informed by his habit of drawing from observations to create daily records of how things appear. These documentations and recordings become mixed up in an amalgamation of his own imagination and research into mask and artifacts to create the work on display. The work weaves in references from art history, such as in Bust from Picasso’s La Californie Head Sculpture and Poking Cyclops’ Eye Out after Rubens. In Dissection of Cyclops’ Eye from a 2-eyed Vantage after Rubens Green presents a concave painting that questions ideas of seeing. Traditional perspective is partially abandoned in favour of double vision, with a blurring at the edges of the painting. The effect is disorientating, bringing into focus our reliance on traditional perspective vision to form our view of the world.
The history of art is bound up with a way of seeing the world and responding to that experience. Green’s work carries on this notion, creating contemporary relics inspired by historic references, but very much bound in popular culture.
Ellie Young’s paintings take images out of the oppressive square frames through which culture is often mediated. Taking her source imagery from film stills, Young takes images frozen from their narrative and explores the reality of the scene. The paintings present crowded scenes of figures and colours, through this mass, an expression is drawn into focus and gains prominence within the unconventional cut-out frame. The irony of the expressions cast on the once actors face is its ingenuousness; the pretend expression of anger, happiness or fright is based on the directors command.
Time is imbedded within the work, from the frozen time of the film still, to the passage of time involved in painting the picture, to the time the viewer spend in the gallery space. Through removing the image from its sequential narrative and re-presenting it, the viewer has no reference for the moments before or after the film still, floating free of associations, the paintings are opened up to new interpretations.
We live in an ocular-centric society constructed through multiple sources such as visual experience and media. Through a process of observing and editing, the three artists in the show explore multiple narratives of how experiences are formed and influenced. The artworks presented in this show explore the uncertainty and fiction of accounts, both personal and public. Whether relying on a way of seeing, reading or documenting our surroundings, information is mutable and our experiences can be edited to fit into our own personal narratives.
Artists Websites
Freya Dooley | www.freyadooley.blogspot.co.uk
Ellie Young | www.ellieyoungart.com
