A group Exhibition by Saul Baraitiser, Hugo Domingo Clayton, Adam Evans-Jones, Jovanna Inic, Victoria Linford, Keir Stevenson, and Mia Olley

Saul Baraitiser has said about his work that life is dance, dance is soul, dance is time. His thinking behind the work was to do with the questions: ’what happens when we restrict time, pace and site?’ If dance is a consideration to life, then does restriction change it? His work aims to express life as soul, dance and bodily movement stuck in time. Dance is something unbound by words and concepts, it is who we are.

Hugo Domingo Clayton presents a work entitled “FUCK COVID”. It is a 100cm x 75cm Paint pen/gloss on canvas. The work is a cartoonish abstraction typography painting about his frustration towards COVID-19 and the negative impact it has had on people’s mental health and wellbeing due not only to the virus itself but more also the rules and regulations regarding the pandemic and how shutting down everything is ruining the arts, culture, economy.

Adam Evan-Jones’ work aims to explore the concept of time and how individuals view time. The artist explores how physical and visual stimulation can impact the way individuals spend their time whilst trying to challenge the question of “what is time?”. Each individual has their own way of spending time, but what if we were to stop and think about what time really is on an individual and collective scale? Is it the passing of days and nights or the moments that we experience in our lives? How long ‘till dinner time? How long is a piece of string?

Victoria Linford’s work is to do with memory and childhood. The site that she has chosen is her bedroom. Because of the setting, she has a specific personal with that space. Therefore, it feels natural for her to place the installation here. The piece is a random but personal collection of belongings with a powerful sense of nostalgia. The piece is about time, the things you hold onto and the things that you leave behind.

Keir Stevenson has created a maquette of an artillery emplacement. The structure was built during WWI as a defence to protect its nearby port and submarine base. The artillery emplacement was upgraded and again used during WW2 for the same purpose. He has chosen this structure because he was initially intrigued by the space it created. As the viewer steps down, they would submerge themself into a 180° cylindrical wall and envelop themself inside, and create a unique atmosphere that detaches the subject from the surrounding coastal landscape. As a medium to create the piece, Stevenson has used a combination of card, cardboard, and polystyrene.  He found that the marks left from tearing off the stickers from the cardboard left an old/worn appearance, which coincidentally matches the original structure.

The artist’s intention with regards to the photography of the maquette was to capture the sense of scale of the original artillery emplacement. By taking the photos within the model and lining up the shot with that of the original reference, he has created an illusion that both images exist at the same scale. The images have been edited to grayscale in order to diminish the distraction caused by the material itself, along with tweaking the contrast, brightness, and exposure of the image. Overall, this has helped to tie the images of the model and original together, and further contribute to the illusion of comparative scale.

Mia Olley’s work is inspired by texture. Specifically, the changes in texture within a site over time. The artist has focused on the beach as its own site, making work at the beach as well as collecting items found there and using them as tools in her practice. She explores how time changes texture and how things slowly start to decay.