View Art Gallery hosts exhibition of ‘visual jazz’

CACOPHONY is the newest themed exhibition at View Art Gallery in Hotwells, opening with a private view on February 23 and running for a month.

Gallery owner and curator Nick Waugh has selected the five featured artists – Thomas Dowdeswell, Mark Elliott Smith, Holly Mingo, Jessie Woodward and Louise C Eames – for their own unique interpretations of abstract art, informed and inspired by music.

He calls it a collection of “visual Jazz”, in which “dissonant tones coalesce on canvas to create vivid colour harmonies.

“As with many abstract artworks we may be immersed in moving contours of form and colour. Or perhaps, before our eyes, order manifests from chaos so that the paintings modulate into recognisable forms; a feeling evoked by imagined or forgotten memories.”

Overall, the pieces shown in CACOPHONY encourage the viewer to explore the psychological condition of synestheisa – the stimulation of one sense from another.

Alongside the display of artworks, a series of ancillary events, including workshops, demonstrations and films is programmed to allow visitors to explore the theme more fully.

The first of these will be Holly Mingo leading a ‘drawing to music’ session, giving people an opportunity to embrace the chance to make art with total freedom, while listening to music.

Holly Mingo – abstract expressionist

Mingo produces “spontaneous depictions of the mind” with a focus on the process rather than the outcome, using music and a meditative approach to creating work, with no planning.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck82OMhqcwU/?hl=en

Thomas Dowdeswell – moral expressionist

Dowdeswell’s aesthetic is one of surreal political satire, intellectual, challenging and complex, but decipherable, in Waugh’s words, “like an unnerving cautionary poem of the end of civilization as we know it”.

Thomas Dowdeswell: A Complex State of Affairs

Jessie Woodward – abstract painter and mixed media artist

In an abstract and experimental style, Woodward uses vivid colour palette and texture to evoke joy and pleasure in the viewer.

Work by Jessie Woodward

Louise C Eames – gestural abstract artist

Eames is inspired by the processes of modern jazz, drama and dance in her work, painting in a way that is fast, free-ranging and often improvisatory.

“I love brash, bright and zinging colours and the lush materiality of full bodied acrylic paint,” she says. “I relish the act of painting and the handling of paint.”

Louise C Eames: Scherzo 3

Mark Elliott Smith – contemporary abstract painter

Elliott Smith cites “a combination of spontaneity and control” and “a chaotic precision” as the goal when he is making work.

Though he paints in an abstract style, he is exploring the suggestion and evocation, both visual and psychological, that underpins his work.

Mark Elliott Smith: Dancing With Fire, Touching The Sky, Kissing The Sun

CACOPHONY is at View Art Gallery from February 23-March 26. For more information, visit www.viewartgallery.uk/exhibitions.

All photos: courtesy of View Art Gallery (main photo: artist Holly Mingo)

Read more: Out of the Dark: The ‘beautifully disturbing, strangely engagin’ exhibition at View Art Gallery

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