Will the meadows bloom again
Maria Andrievskaya, Martha Lamont, Kyung Soon Park and Johanna Seidel
3rd of July - 3rd of August
Private View 3rd of July 6-8pm
Soho Revue is pleased to present, ‘When will the meadows grow again?’ A group exhibition of four artists who are all inspired by their embodied experiences of the natural world. The ‘meadows’ referred to in the exhibition titles are used here as a poetic metaphor for the inner realms, a verdant space of growth, expansion and possibility, as all four of the artists describe their introspective natures as integral to their creative practices.
For Lamont, personal experiences inspire her introspective artworks, as the ‘self’ as a starting point enables her to connect to a viewer whose story may echo her own, oftentimes posing the question: Is this story solely about the artist? Or am I, the viewer, part of this story too? Lamont’s practice spans over large scale figurative paintings, to small intimate canvases, alongside ink and watercolour studies. Within her paintings, figuration dissolves and reappears through the dilution of pigments with mediums and thinners, contrasted with areas of opacity and definition. The blurred boundaries between forms reflect the slippage between reality and fictive spaces within our minds. The fantastical worlds she creates are imagined and metaphorical, often resulting in compositions that are idiosyncratic, expressing the strange, contradictory nature of the mind. The environments I depict contain loose, ambiguous representations of nature, where growth acts as a symbol. These are represented through microbiology and symbolic botanic imagery alongside painterly effects that corrode the surfaces. This corrosion often suggesting the activity of microscopic organisms, such as bacteria growth or parasites- metaphors Lamont finds interesting in relation to the inner workings of the mind.
Similarly, Andrievskaya’s practice is about her constant observation of nature, and how its subtleties can symbolise the complexities of our inner world. Through sustained looking, she feels that the microscopic world of plants can reveal parallels to our states of mind. She sees nature not as ornamental and passive, but as an energetic companion to our own existence, one that should be tenderly protected and acknowledged. Within her work, the land serves as a sentient character in its own right, one that beckons us in and soothes all that exists within it. Hazes of light evoke an eternal dawn or dusk, as if the landscape is constantly on the edge of change. As part of her continuing material enquiry, she collect rocks and earth from her homeland of Cyprus to grind into handmade oil paint, infusing the canvas with the environment she is recalling. She intends for her canvases to feel vibrant and alive, as if they can continue to flourish and grow beyond its edges. Shifting between our collective familiarity with old master techniques and the childhood motifs that informed her own lifetime, she seeks to challenge the accessibility and hierarchy of visual language in art. Through painting, she is curious to find an alternative reality in response to our failure to protect that which nurtures us.
Seidel’s artistic work deals with the nature of perceived realities, she approaches this subject by means of a poetic visual language in which symbols from history, mythology and dreams mix with the everyday and the personal. The canvas offers the artist a space in which she can freely create references and develop narratives, constantly searching for a balance between realistic and naïve figuration. Favouring a palette in which shades of violet, pink, orange and green play an important role, Seidel develop stories and still images that exist in an atmospheric space and condense memories and imaginings into abstract moments that become generally accessible and experiential. In this sense, Seidel refers to the power and abundance of the inner world and to an associative kind of intelligence that creates reality and eludes a temporal sense of logic.
In a similar vein, Park’s life experiences are the source of her creative output. Having always endeavored to relate my art to her own experiences, her work is imbued with the unique way in which she views the world. Finding inspiration in the uniqueness of individuality and the difference between the culture Park grew up in and the culture she finds herself in now. After leaving one life to begin another, memories are a source of great solace for the artist, and such memories have taken on a more vibrant and dynamic quality. Whilst intangible in nature, Park’s memories and awareness continue to shape the way she sees, understands and interacts with people. Often using scenes from her memories as a starting point, these motifs act as a gateway to show people how Park sees the world and the cultural background she comes from. Guiding the viewer on a tour of her world; a world that is similar to the places that they know but just different enough to make them re-examine what is familiar to them.
