For Immediate Release

Cella Gallery is excited to present a series of new paintings and a  
larger-than-life sized installation by American artist Gwyneth Scally.

Gwyneth Scally "The Rise of the Original Eden"

Opening Reception:  Saturday, November 21st, 7-11 pm

(Exhibition Dates:  November 21st - December 23rd)

Gwyneth Scally was born and raised in Washington, D.C. Her work is  
deeply informed by an early immersion in the worlds of politics and  
journalism; the malleable natures of truth and information are  
important themes in her paintings, as are the underlying psychological  
forces that shape the public worlds of mass culture and communication.  
The artist’s father, William Scally, is a British journalist who  
covers the D.C. political scene, including the Senate and the White  
House. Her mother was raised in the Italian community outside of New  
York, providing the artist with an exposure to Catholicism that has  
influenced her use of symbolism and metaphorical narrative.  Scally  
spent much of her childhood on the family sailboat on the Chesapeake  
Bay; her work has been strongly influenced by the eerie dark waters of  
the Chesapeake, and by the strange primordial creatures that live in  
its murky depths.

After receiving degrees in both Art and Literature, Scally moved to  
Arizona, where she received her MFA from the University of Arizona.  
She has worked as an artist in Arizona for the last decade,  
interspersing her work with travel to- and exhibitions in- Latin  
America, Europe, Northern Africa, New York, China, Newfoundland and  
the Black Sea of Bulgaria. Most recently, Scally was awarded a grant  
to spend the summer of 2009 in Glacier National Park, making video  
work about the vanishing glaciers. The artist’s work has been inspired  
by her time on various coastlines, and she has turned her attentions  
to issues of Global Warming, melting ice, and the rising oceans.   
Juxtaposing images of aquatic life and human subjects, Scally explores  
issues of displacement, nostalgia, and climatic longing, while  
suggesting deeper issues of an environmental order overturned.

The jellyfish sculptures, tangled and transparent in the gallery  
space, evoke both beauty and disgust in the viewer.  Delicate and  
strangely graceful, these creatures also suggest slimy tissues and a  
quiet sense of menace.  Their gelatinous bodies remind us of our  
relationship with our own bodies, of the tangled emotions of beauty  
and disgust that are part of the human biological experience.  We too  
evolved from the primordial soup and from simple and strange aquatic  
organisms.  The jellyfish act as haunting pilgrims to the original  
Eden, the ocean waters from which we all evolved.

Not only is our biological evolution from the oceans explored, but  
also the strange state in which the ocean is returning to claim us,  
its prodigal children.  Jellyfish now fill a room made for land- 
dwelling humans.  Manta rays and other creatures invade the landscape  
as tides rise, as a group of pleasure-seekers pose for a snapshot,  
unwitting as the waters creep up around them.  We, the descendants of  
the primordial waters, have been heedless in the care and keeping of  
our ancestry.  As ice melts and seas around the globe rise, we are  
witnessing displacement on a grand scale- the displacement of human  
populations, the displacement of aquatic creatures, and the  
displacement of the ocean itself, the amniotic fluid of humanity, as  
it breaches the shores of our rash world.

Who: Gwyneth Scally “The Rise of the Original Eden”

What: Opening Reception

Where: Cella Gallery, 5229 Lankershim Blvd. North Hollywood, CA 91601

When: Saturday, November 21st, 7-11 pm

Exhibition Dates:  November 21st  – December 23rd, 2009

Cost: FREE (RSVP to:  info@cellagallery.com)

CONTACT:
Shannon Currie Holmes
213-291-7908
Cella Gallery
5229 Lankershim Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91601
www.cellagallery.com
info@cellagallery.com