Lesley Bunch LG and 11 other painters are adrift in Great Yarmouth.
An exhibition of paintings by:
Barbara Howey, Deb Covell, James Quin, Jeffrey Dennis, Joanna Whittle, Julian Brown, Katie Pratt , Lesley Bunch, Lisa Ivory, Lisa Milroy, Molly Thomson, Roland Hicks
PrimeYarc
Market Gates Shopping Centre, Great Yarmouth NR30 2BG
Friday 15 March – Sunday 28 April 2024
Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays 12-4 or by appointment
The word ‘adrift’ reflects the condition of having willingly relinquished one’s moorings and loosened one’s grip on a predetermined destination. It is in this watchfully ‘drifting’ zone of possibility that questions can surface, possibilities co-exist and ideas take shape. For every artist this space will be different in its scope and extent.
Being adrift entails tolerating uncertainty, and the viewer is invited to embrace that position – to be cut loose from the confines of an explanatory text and experience meaning as something fluid and perhaps provisional.
While the work of the participating artists covers a range of current painting practices the aim of the exhibition is not to be a comprehensive overview of what is a wide field but to open up unpredictable exchanges between works; exchanges that can suggest fresh perspectives, and new ‘adrifts’.
The exhibition coincided with CONTRAcurricular – a Summit for radical and alternative art education organised by originalprojects;. In the context of this event, how ‘being adrift’ is embraced within the structures of formal educational practices might be asked. Going somewhere new entails experiencing a state of unknowing and also, for both artist and viewer, understanding that meanings can be multiple, layered and open to interpretation. It is through taking on this challenge that painting constantly reinvents itself.
Jeffrey Dennis, who when writing about a residency with the British School of Rome in 2021, referenced John Keats’ advocacy for ‘Negative Capability’, which helped inform some of the thinking for the exhibition, talked about this and some of the broader themes around painting on Saturday 23 March.
…adrift… is organised by original projects in collaboration with Molly Thomson and Barbara Howey and supported with funding from the East Anglia Art Fund and Contemporary British Painting.
curators: Barbara Howey, Molly Thomson and Kaavous Clayton
funding: @paintbritain @eastangliaartfund
