SOME ROSES AND THEIR PHANTOMS | 30 APRIL - 4 MAY
PRIVATE VIEW and MEET THE ARTIST'S EVENT | 30 APRIL 6 - 9pm
VENUE | Bermondsey Project Space - London
Sue Williams A’Court’s practice explores the notion of the visual sublime working within painting, collage and drawing, she employs re-imagined landscapes as a trigger for encounter or contemplation. Classical landscape references are reinterpreted in a new context, rendered in graphite on a variety of surfaces. The form, composition and materiality are meticulously constructed to summon a state of mind rather than a specific location.
The tension between the precision drawing and the loosely painted ground references different models of art history and alludes to contrasting types of mental attention competing for the same psychological space. A' Court invites curiosity of one's own mental state.
Her interest has been formed by her meditation practice and by the ideas of pre-eminent psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist in his book “ The Master and His Emissary-the Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World”, presenting his research on the hemisphere differences and the different perspectives they have in constructing our current experience and impact on our society.
Sue Williams A’Court exquisitely borrows details from Arcadian landscapes of historical works to create a series of ‘portraits’. Exploring the way we subconsciously see human forms in the world around us, the paintings’ muted surface evoke Victorian photographs, yet the faces within emerge from delicately interwoven trees, paths and boulders. Playing with ideas of identity, and perception questioning reality, the portraits are landscapes of our own imagination, a state of mind rather than a specific location. Hovering ambiguously between our inner and outer worlds, their mesmerizing, miniature scale invites viewers to lose themselves in an intimate, contemplative reverie in which we no longer feel wholly separate from what we observe.
Sue said about the exhibition: "I feel the landscape content of my painting transforms whilst I make the work from the original historical reference to have a certain mysterious creature quality that emerges almost unconsciously - the subject matter of my work presents a state of mind and is inspired by the concept of female divine in nature. I resonate with the strange forms Dorethea Tanning refers to as “phantoms” and have always been inspired by surrealist ideas. The title of one of my paintings in this show “kiss the ground” references a quote by the surrealist Magritte; “The kiss bestowed by the mind on the unconscious of nature and the imprint that it leaves”.