Hocking, Morreau, Swift, Wootton
September 20 – October 2
Private View: Tuesday September
21
The Coningsby Gallery
Four
diverse artists, Hocking, Morreau, Swift, Wootton, are debuting their group show
at The Coningsby Gallery on September 20.
HOCKING
Nancy Hocking studied sculpture at Central Saint
Martins, formally known as Central
Scho
ol of Art and Design in 1976. Until recently, her career was as a potter and
specialist in ancient Cypriot pottery technology. Her 2D work is predominantly
abstract and posits odd, ephemeral phenomena, some anchored within hints of
landscape and others free and open to the viewers’ interpretation. Very
fine, small figurative relief pieces, with similar ephemeral qualities, in
wedgewood blue stoneware will be exhibited. The watercolours, paintings and
relief pieces are on an intimate scale, intended to draw the viewer in. Working
with clay remains, still a passion of Hocking, the skill and craftsmanship of
her years as a potter are evident in her 3D work. Two examples of her portrait
work will also be on show.
www.nancyhocking.com
MORREAU
Jacqueline Morreau studied at Chouinard Art
Institute in Los Angeles. She worked and exhibited in San Francisco and
Cambridge, before coming to England in 1972. She has since exhibited in group
and one-person shows in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and other locations in the
United Kingdom. Her major retrospective, Themes and Variations (1996)
toured to several venues, including the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull and the
Pitshanger Museum in London.
Morreau has been active in promoting
women’s art and, in 1981, played a key role in mounting the seminal
exhibition Women’s Images of Men at the ICA. She has taught the
Royal College of Art, at Oxford Brookes University, and at Regent’s
College in London. While she has worked extensively as a printmaker and in oils,
this exhibition will exhibit Morreau’s figure drawings. She is widely
recognized as being a lead practitioner of this subject and medium.
www.jacquelinemorreau.com
BERNARD
SWIFT
Born in Hackney, Bernard Swift was always drawing from a
young age and attended art school, but was unable to complete the diploma
course. He became an apprentice in a commercial art
co
mpany where he stayed for five years. Swift freelanced as a commercial artist,
working for C&A, Esso and on Disney’s Robin Hood, among other Disney
movies. Along with the contemporary works of Disney, Giles the cartoonist and
Edward Burra, the respected and classic works of Brueghel, Spencer and Hogarth
have been very influential to his art.
Bernard Swift’s son rented
a studio in the Chocolate Factory in Wood Green, but shortly afterwards he was
called to New York. Swift immediately took over his son’s studio, although
up until then he hadn’t painted more than a handful of paintings. Eleven
years later, half the artists at the Chocolate Factory in Wood Green call him a
modern Stanley Spencer and half call him a new Brueghel.
Swift has
exhibited widely, including at the Barbican, the Festival Hall, and Cork Street
and will be exhibiting in Paris in October.
www.bernardswift.com
JULIAN WOOTTON
Julian
Wootton’s sculptures are comprised of earthenware in bright, glowing
colours and stoneware in darker tones with rougher, grittier surfaces. Each
piece stands between 50 and 70 cm in height. Many of the pieces are
manipulations of line and space, which are intended to strike the viewer as
labyrinthine. Other pieces indicate the processes of disintegration, linked to
flux and change, a particular fascination of Wootton’s.
A
background in archaeology and an interest in other times and places, has been a
significant influence on his artwork. On first observation, this can appear to
be a dominant factor, until one engages more deeply with the myriad of
influences in his energetic work. The sculptures are extraordinary environments,
resonant of tradition and the “memory of the ancestral.”
Social and cultural production, literature and even film play pivotal roles in
Wootton’s dynamic sculptures. www.julianwoottonsculptures.com
The Coningsby
Ga
llery,
30 Tottenham Street, W1T 4RJ
T. 0207 636 1064
E.
helendriver@coningsbygallery.com
W. www.coningsbygallery.com
Painting by Bernard Swift
