A Change of Seasons

The first signs of green, our senses turned to changing landscapes, a yearning for Spring.

Danielle Creenaune - Dido Crosby - Tom Hammick - Paul Hart - Jason Hicklin - Katherine Jones - Rachel Shaw Ashton - Kazuhito Takadoi

As the winter months draw to a close and longer, warmer days beckon, we are delighted to invite you to jaggedart for A Change of Seasons. The exhibition will show new works by both gallery and invited artists, which explore and celebrate light, landscape and change.

Danielle Creenaune combines inherited and imagined landscapes selecting and combining imagery from Western Europe and Danielle’s native Australia. It is a recurrent concern in Australian art to address notions of artistic and personal identity through large scale landscape painting. Danielle’s landscapes are atypically intimate and intriguing; in the etching Border, she creates the landscape by intricately outlining the overgrown trees and shrubbery, leaving both the trees and the space between, empty. Danielle describes her work as being about “memory, private connection and sense of belonging.”

Dido Crosby completed her first degree in Zoology and then trained at Central St Martin’s, giving her a binary understanding of the animals which she sculpts. Dido captures both the physical characteristics and temperament of her subjects with technical versatility; these are not only sculptures, but charismatic portraits. From bellowing proud stags to cackling crows, Dido’s subjects are often taken from the English countryside. The bronze sculpture Black Sow lays in repose in the gallery – she looks heavy and exhausted; a moments respite from suckling piglets.

Tom Hammick often combines figurative imagery with landscape. In the large scale woodcut, Edgeland, a mother and child walk away from the viewer. We cannot see what is ahead of them; despite the vast dark space surrounding them it is a feeling of warmth, not bleakness which resonates. Tom works as a printmaker and painter simultaneously, and there are aspects of his distinctive painting style and technique which are evident in these prints. The pink ground is used on the block colours which constitute the figures as well as the surrounding landscape, unifying the two elements. One can never be sure whether these landscapes and scenes are real or imagined; they are always atmospheric and evocative.

Following his recent solo exhibition at jaggedart, Paul Hart’s black and white photographs of undulating landscapes and dense forests capture quintessential English countryside with stylistic flair and remarkable understanding. In English Landscapes lines of crops sweep across the foreground, while inclement skies turn into billowing clouds over the extensive fields of the East of England. Though his photographs portray cropped Autumnal corn and grass, thick and wet following an October rain, they exemplify growth, the changing of seasons and rejuvenation in nature. These striking images are quietly dramatic and beautifully composed. In the foreground every tuft of grass or stalk of corn is exquisitely defined.

Jason Hicklin draws, paints and prints tempestuous black and white landscapes. Whether rugged stretches of coast or mountainous terrain, Jason’s techniques reveal the same sense of drama in their execution, as in their subject matter; ink pours across the horizontal page as would a storm rolling in. Large scale charcoal drawings capture these magnificent landscapes and envelop the viewer. Based on drawings made on trips to the island of Colonsay, his work in various media, is moody, striking and energetic.

Katherine Jones’ prints have the crisp tones of spring dawn. Katherine highlights the delicate nature of man-made structures through her depictions of the house or dwelling in a natural environment. While the form is repeated, each piece retains a particular beauty and individuality. The repetition is sometime reassuring, sometime disquieting. A glowing fragile structure of membranous walls surrounded by dark and threatening woodlands frequently appears in Katherine work. A symbol of shelter and protection, the recurring image of a house explores the relationship between interior and exterior worlds, and contrasting concepts ranging from perceived protection to insubstantiality and vulnerability.

Rachel Shaw Ashton has created new hand cut paper works for the exhibition. These landscapes are constituted of miniature forms or figures. White paper, on white paper, only when the viewer approaches the work closely, do they realize the hundreds of swirling figures and the intricate workmanship of these works. These pieces are always a vehicle for the artist’s feelings, and often intriguingly titled. Hundreds of tiny human figures swirl around in the larger landscape, perhaps drawing comparison to man’s insignificance and impermanence in the world.

Kazuhito Takadoi is inspired by seasonal change. The natural colours of grasses that he grows, picks and meticulously stitches through hand made paper, slowly fade over time. The grasses leave shadows over the paper, which change according to the space in which they are hung, as do the reflections of the gold leaf which is inlaid under the grasses. In KOISHI [Pebbles], the white and golden tones of each oval form exude light and warmth; the artist sees something inspiring in the simplicity of a simple pebble. Although he uses almost pure geometric forms, Kazuhito’s work is handmade, imperfect and more beautiful for it.