Rowley Gallery Blog
The window of the Rowley Gallery has been blessed by the sudden arrival of a forest of twig saints. They appear to be involved in a game of invisible football, or perhaps they’re dancing in a silent disco, or maybe more likely they’re just writhing to the rhythm of life. Continue reading “I Want To Be In That Number”
It’s time to say goodbye to Paradise, to Will Smith’s sunny holiday paintings and to Chris Kenny’s construction with found landscape paintings. But before I change the window display I just can’t resist rearranging it for one last private view. Continue reading “Anagram”
St Desideratus – May 8th
Little saints live within the fine branches of certain bushes.
They are released by cutting away everything that is not them.
Continue reading “Twig Saints”
Panarea
paradise /ˈpær.ə.daɪs/ noun: The word “paradise” entered English from the French paradis, inherited from the Latin paradisus, from Greek parádeisos (παράδεισος), from an Old Iranian paridayda – “walled enclosure”. Paradise is the term for a place of timeless harmony; the abode of Adam and Eve before the Fall in the biblical account of the Creation; the Garden of Eden; a place or condition of great happiness where everything is exactly as you would like it to be; an ideal or idyllic place or state – synonyms: Utopia, fairyland, Shangri-La, heaven, nirvana, Arcadia. Paradise may also refer to the collection of holiday paintings by Will Smith displayed in The Rowley Gallery window. Continue reading “Paradise”
Twig Circle
Construction with found twigs
I attempt to make intense, individual objects
objects whose power is not dependent on where or when they are seen. Continue reading “Here & Now”
In a series of painstakingly constructed works using found materials Chris Kenny examines and muses on the notion of Paradise: our attempt to define it, build it, reach it or perhaps remember it. Rows of little wooden houses built from abandoned amateur landscape paintings are incised with the names of ideal worlds: Arcadia, Elysium, Utopia. They poignantly demonstrate the common desire to make a heaven on earth, a perfect garden, a harmonious society.
Chris Kenny’s exhibition is at Pitzhanger Manor Gallery, 26 April – 11 May 2014. More details here.
Artists’ attempts to envisage heaven on earth through painting landscapes is explored in works comprising rows of little houses built from discarded amateur pictures of idealized Nature, their facades incised with large letters to spell out mythical paradises such as Arcadia and Elysium. In Kenny’s vision the houses “become little streets or queues, identities waiting patiently dreaming”.
Chris Kenny’s recent work is being exhibited at England & Co from 12 November – 7 December.
The Rowley Gallery has been the kind provider of much of the discarded wood needed for a series of little buildings I have made this year. Continue reading “History”