Preview: Sightings (Caraboo Projects, Bedminster)

Sightings, the second exhibition at fledgling Bedminster artspace Caraboo Projects, brings together six artists all exploring such fascinating themes as shamanism, divination, witchcraft and Victorian spiritualism.

Sightings features painting, drawing and sculpture by Laura Bygrave, Alex Crocker, Jacqui Hallum, Karolina Ptaszkowska, Ross Taylor, plus a new site-specific work by Lucy Stein. The pieces will sit alongside objects from the artists’ personal possessions, thus creating a layering of works which through their placement and display will oscillate together to create a single voice.

An interesting and diverse programme of events will accompany the exhibition – visit the Caraboo Projects website or the exhibition’s Facebook page for a full rundown on all of these.

A little more about the six artists:

Laura Bygrave works with the sculptural possibilities of painting and drawing examining the arcane and the caricature. Laura works with the image of the female throughout mythology to create works that embody the the physical and psychic movements between individuals.

Laura Bygrave, Sex and Other States (installation) Pic: Alexander Christie / @alex_christie

Alex Crocker makes works from observations in his everyday life and the walks he takes around his home in rural Norfolk in which he is particularly fascinated with the local animal and plant life. Alex creates work that seem to be conjured from and dragged out of the land through a heady and hazy psychedelic gauze.

Alex Crocker, Horse

Jacqui Hallum’s experimental works play with the alchemical nature of image making, literally, using salt forming crystals and other mixed media within her work, referencing medieval manuscripts (Untitled, detail, pictured top) and tarot cards. Jacqui is the winner of the 2018 John Moores Painting Prize.

Karolina Ptaszkowska lives and works in Bristol and received her MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, specialising in painting. Karolina weaves personal narratives and mythologies amongst the forms and techniques of modernism creating works that embrace their own logic. These works have more recently started to incorporate sculptural elements of rope which playfully navigate the myth of witches being able to ‘catch the wind’ within knots.

Karolina Ptaszkowska, One Thing Is Clear

Lucy Stein is based in St Just, Cornwall which she considers an embodied reenactment of combined myths from art history and her own personal history. Lucy’s work is focused on painting with a fascination in the modernist tradition including a multitude of other activities that draw from esoteric literature, folk tradition and feminist theory and performance.

Lucy Stein, HERaldry (Once Bitten)

Ross Taylor’s work presents a hypnogogic view from a decaying, morphing body which has somehow managed to transcended the realm of materiality and is now oozing in an aether between worlds. Ross was Abbey Scholar in Painting at the British School of Rome and is founder of esoteric publishing house Mrs Patterson’s Press, so named after occultist Austin Osman Spare’s ‘witch-mother’.

Work by Ross Taylor

Caraboo Projects is a non-profit contemporary visual arts space co-founded by a group of artists, educators, and other specialists in the creative sector, and housed in an old printing factory just off East Street in Bedminster. “Our collective is dedicated to building an accessible art space in Bedminster that promotes experimentation and education across disciplines,” explains Caraboo’s Felicia Cleveland-Stevens. “Through an exciting programme of free exhibitions, talks, screenings and workshops, we aim to support artists’ professional development and create meaningful engagement and learning opportunities for all.”

Sightings Nov 16-Dec 16, Caraboo Projects, 2 Stafford St, Bedminster, BS3 4DA, Thur-Sun 11am-5pm. Opening night Fri 16 6.30-9pm.
For more info on the exhibition and accompanying events programme, visit carabooprojects.com/sightings