‘Hopscotch’
Anne Carney Raines
7th of June - 30th of June
Soho Revue is pleased to present ‘Hopscotch’, a solo exhibition of paintings by Anne-Carney Raines. In the exhibition, Anne-Carney combines influences as broad as North-American quilt design, manuscript illumination and the architecture of skate parks to create a body of works that reflect upon the fabrication of fictive worlds, the artifice of painting and the construction of space. The title encompasses the playful nature of the work as well as the rhythm of the game which echoes throughout her paintings in the characteristic repetition of motifs,
The works in ‘Hopscotch’ are permeated with a sense of dualism; between the playfulness evoked by the architecture of skateparks and the eeriness of these empty locations; between the cheery brightness of her colour palette which is offset by the claustrophobia of maze like structures, repeated patterns and sinister shadows. The paintings feel busy and fun yet there is a lurking sense of quiet uncanniness evoked by a distinct lack of human presence in places where we might expect people at play.
Throughout the exhibition, Raines draws attention to the tension in her work between reality and fiction and, through using devices such as tromp l’ceil, questions an increasing reliance on a knowledge of reality learnt through fiction: how for example, our relationship to nature is mediated through illusionistic representation of landscapes in images instead of being in it. Just as in cities where nature is either inaccessible or trapped and contained, Raines’ winding walls and patterns block complete accessibility to the worlds beyond. As Rosalind Krauss famously noted in her essay on ‘the grid’ in modernist painting, the grid structures that surround many of the scenes in ‘Hopscotch’ act a a sort of window, truncating our view but never shaking a certainty that the landscape continues beyond the limits of what we can, at the moment see. Anne-Carney draws on her background as a scenic painter to investigate space in this show, and it is through the visual language of theatre and set design that she depicts environments that explore the artifice of painting and the relationship between interior and exterior spaces, questioning the traditional notion of reality external to and fiction within paintings. In her recognisable yet unfamiliar scenes, Raines embraces the deceitful allure of painting, creative deliciously immersive yet intangible works.
In this body of work, Anne-Carney focuses particularly on the architecture of skateparks and many of her titles are derived from skating terminology, such as ‘Fruitboots’ or ‘Funbox.’ Through making places that recall specific experiences or memories (such as stages and playgrounds) the locus of her investigation into space, Raines calls to mind Bachelard’s conception of existence as understood through the contribution of surroundings to our relationship with the universe and the collective consciousness. Certain design elements in her work (stage flats or the ramps of a skating ground) evoke strong emotions within the viewer and reconnect us with memories of specific places yet, in their lack of habitation, feel anonymous and lonely.
