Relative Values: a collaboration with Flowers East
21 March - 3 May 2003
Artists: Glenys Barton, Stephen Chambers, Carole Hodgson, Tim Lewis, Freya Payne, Trevor Sutton.
Relative Values heralds a wealth of interesting exhibitions during 2003 at PM Gallery & House. This exhibition signals a fruitful partnership between a commercial concern and a publicly funded gallery. Relative Values offers the audience a unique opportunity to see the original work of six major international figures from Flowers East, one of the most innovative dealers in contemporary art.
Major works, including some that will be newly produced
responding to the domestic setting of Pitzhanger Manor-House and
the contemporary Gallery, reflect the distinct vision of each of
these six artists and concerns of the artists' works selected to
contrast with the architectural features within both spaces.
This juxtaposition will enable audiences to see how 'setting'
influences our response to visual art.
Stephen Chambers' paintings have a formidable presence, which blesses the eye while intriguing the brain. Chambers describes his paintings as being about 'states of mind' and talks of being 'interested in paradox; the welding together of seduction and mayhem, innocence and menace, serenity and anarchy'.
Freya Payne - In response to Pitzhanger Manor-House, Payne has made a site-specific mixed media work for the upstairs drawing room. Three simple stained glass boxes stand on the white marble mantelpiece. Suspended in each is a bird-like form made from wood, bone, stone and hair. The bird motif is taken from the stylised exotic birds that repeat on the rooms printed wallpaper. In the sculptures, however, the exotic is stripped and life dislocated in a more ambiguous fall between birth and death.
The art of these six artists share a common thread in the intensity of concentration each artist brings to the task of making art. This exhibition will allow our imagination to be challenged and inspired from many perspectives and invites our mind's eye to respond. It will provide audiences with an extraordinary opportunity to experience the breadth and quality of work emanating from influential and established artists from this renowned East London gallery.