4 January – 8 February 2019
Exhibition Private View on Thursday 10 January 2019 from 6-9pm
Works are located on all 4 floors of the Alison Richard Building
Solitudes and Seasons includes five painters and one filmmaker whose work deals with the eerie in the English landscape. It brings together different ideas of folklore, the unknown, the weird, science fiction or a sense of the supernatural.
Adam Scovell | Ben Walker | Mandy Hudson | Rhys Trussler | Robin Dixon | Sam Douglas
The British tradition of observing landscapes in the arts is so widespread as to be better described as an obsession. Like all obsessions, a sense of darkness is easily intuited and embedded into the very grain of representations, whether they be rural, liminal or urban. Instead of considering the popular and linear narrative of British arts as a continuous tradition of romantic pastoralism finding a pure, unquestioning sense of the land, a darker counter-tradition is now perceivable; one that is still active in the production of work and necessary in its addressing the continuing issues that prevail within the landscapes of England in particular.
Read a Q&A with artist and exhibition curator Ben Walker
Read a review in Varsity Magazine
Artist Biographies
Adam Scovell is a writer and filmmaker based in London. He is studying for a PhD in film music and transcendental aesthetics at Goldsmiths and has had work featured in The Times, BFI, Sight & Sound and The Guardian. He runs the arts essay website, Celluloid Wicker Man, and has had super-8 film work screened at a variety of festivals and events. In 2015, he worked with Robert Macfarlane on an adaptation of his Sunday Times best-seller, Holloway. His first book, Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange, was published by Auteur in 2017.
Ben Walker lives and works in Kent. He is a painter with an interest in English landscape, folk horror, Factory Records, 1970s and 80s educational programmes for schools, childrens’ TV programmes and public information films. He studied at Sheffield Hallam University and Wimbledon School of Art. He has exhibited widely, including at Transition Gallery and Charlie Smith London, and in the Marmite Prize, and in 2012 won the Jack Goldsmith Painting Prize.
Robin Dixon lives and works in London. He has exhibited in the UK and internationally. Exhibitions include John Moores Painting Prize (2014), Milton Keynes Gallery (2013), Lion & Lamb Gallery London (2012), APT Gallery London (2011), Jerwood Contemporary Painters (2007), and a solo Exhibition at the Societe des Arts Technologiques, Montreal (2006). He studied at Nene College, Northampton and at Maidstone College of Art.
Rhys Trussler is a graduate from the Turps Banana Studio Painting Programme (2015-17) and has a B.A. in Fine Art from Winchester School of Art (1998-2001). Recent exhibitions include Turps Summer Show, Art Space Bermondsey, London (2017), Running With The Wolves 35Blumen, Kreffeld, Germany (2017) and Helical Swirl, Studio 180, London (2016). His work is influenced by his interest in horror films, vintage Sci Fi novels and the Western Occult Revival of the early 20th century.
Mandy Hudson lives and works in London. She studied at Maidstone College of Art and has exhibited in group exhibitions in the UK and internationally. These include The Marmite Painting Prize (2016), Milton Keynes Gallery, Collyer Bristow Gallery, APT Gallery, Fieldgate at Angus Hughes, ArtSway Open (2010) and Gallery Corridor in Reykjavik. She was included in Contemporary Art Society’s ART futures (2007) held at Bloomberg SPACE, London.
Sam Douglas has exhibited widely since graduating from the Royal college of art in 2007, showing in China, Russia, Norway, Canada, Portugal, Ireland, Scotland and England. Recent exhibitions include Contemporary British painting at Yantai Museum in China, Studio 1.1, Charlie Smith London, St. Petersburg Museum of Nonconformist art, and
The Newlyn Gallery, Cornwall. Solo exhibitions include Carslaw St. Lukes, the Royal Hibernian Gallery Dublin, The Cross Gallery Dublin, and the Corn Exchange Gallery, Edinburgh. His work was included in The East London painting prize, The Threadneedle prize, The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and the Royal Hibernian academy annual. He completed Residencies in Norway, Russia, Majorca, Madeira, Canada and Ireland.