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 Love

&

Diogo Duarte

Love&

Death

@

Walcot 

Chapel

 

In The Wall (by and for Christine) Diogo takes the starting point of possibly the most familiar of all images of suffering and death and confronts it with an expression of love defiant. Eros challenges thanatos. The individual challenges social convention and dominant norms. 

 

"Unconscious Commands and Judgements of Our Century is an on-going self portrait series I started in the summer of 2014. Since, I have been reflectively photographing myself with the objective of telling the story of growing up as a gay child in Portugal during the mid-nineties. Looking back at my childhood, I often have the impulse to portray things as I wish they had been, not as they were, a portrayal that is still nevertheless a reflection of the many ‘selves’ I created at different stages of my development to cope in such an environment."

 

 

 

Falling Out of Love depicts the death of  "the most beautiful suicide ever", as she was described by the press of the time, 1947.

 

Life magazine wrote: “On May Day,  just after leaving her fiancé,

 

23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note: ‘He is much better off without me … I wouldn’t make a good wife for anybody,’ …

 

Then she crossed it out.

 

"She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb.”

 

 

 

 

Melissa Wraxall

                                           www.melissawraxall.com/

Familial love and death are central to Melissa's ghostly paintings, which are derived from historical family photographs. They are expressions of a wish to connect to and "revive" people from her family's past; children or young people who have now grown old or died, and some who died before she was born.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Each photograph represents a tiny piece of the jigsaw in someone's personal narrative, and as many of the prints and negatives are fading or damaged, this fragmentary visual evidence is itself ephemeral. I use the photographs as catalysts for extending and reinventing these narratives in my paintings."

Kim Flame

 

The everpresent skull is brought to sizzling life by Kim in Death and the Maiden - the story of a seaside tragedy.

Lesley & Anna of Sea on Glass

 

 Funfairs

 

 Bright lights

 

 Dark shadows

 

 Crooked houses

 

 

 Banshee laughter

 

 Burnt sugar Love

 

 Death the great procurer

 

 False allure

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Living by the North Devon coast, we have discovered a rich natural resource in the sea glass that washes up daily on our local beaches. This previously discarded and thrown away material undergoes a marine metamorphosis over time to become opalescent jewels laying in the sand

waiting for us to discover. 

 

"We aim to recycle and reinvent, to give a new narrative and to chronicle this material's journey into our pictures.  Our inspiration comes from using this transition of materials to reflect our own personal journeys to where we are now, as well as future destinations we would love to reach. And also, the inevitable destiny awaiting us all...."

Daniel Rushforth

 

Daniel is a member of the Deviant Art movement. His work is imbued with the themes of love and death.

Maggie Royle

"The paintings in the series Las Noticias make reference to ‘places in the news’ in Mexico.  The impetus for the work arose when my son moved to Mexico and I wanted to find out more about his adopted country.

 

The paintings start with research into news stories from Mexico. Invariably the incidents they describe are horrific.  Using Google street view as a virtual tool, I ‘go’ to the relevant places and take screen shots of ordinary Mexican streets close to where events have occurred. These become the starting point for my paintings."

.

 

 

I am primarily interested in creating atmosphere and an environment in my work. It is the air and the silence of the forest. I work in monochrome because it transports me to that space, almost like a dream. It is the deadened sound under the canopy, and the stillness of the air, as the pillars of the trees rise high above you.

 

"A central theme of my work is memory and myth. In recent work that concept of memory has been linked to death and

monuments to death

Caroline Waterlow

 

In this sombre (or is it agonised?) drawing, Waiting to Die like a Dog,  Caroline evokes the great courage and concentration of the German artist, Käthe Kollwitz , who daily faced the horrors of the most deadly century in human history. 

Jennie Gilling

 

In her cyanotypes ("sun prints" that use a technology from the very beginnings of photography) Jennie captures the process of decay. In plants, of course, this is part of an annual cycle that promises resurrection just a season away.

 

Jenny was particularly inspired by the plants she found in the graveyard of Walcot Chapel.         

 

"I have invigilated the gallery many times, and have a feel for the grassy, marked, unmarked space around it, as well as blank, not blank space that is contained. 

 

"I  have done work on seed pods, the skeletal stuff that remains once the petals have decayed.  It echoes the space outside chapel and the process of decomposition, which is fleeting and dreamlike."

Francia Iniguez

Francia's Eleven Poppies and the Soul Collector use molten metal in their making -as do the mythologising events of Robert Booth-  but to very different effect. These small bronzes are in the tradition of war monuments that have memorialised the fallen of the battlefields of Europe since Classical times. And sometimes Francia makes monuments on a life-sized scale.

 

In contrast with much of the contemporary art provoked by war, there is no irony here. These are unapologetic acts of sincerity.

 


“Some think of war and immediately picture a relentless man-devouring monster. Others see heroes. I am compelled to give form to the incredible stories that fill my mind and imagination, honouring those who are caught up in the human condition we define as war, and for the time being at least seem destined to repeat.”

Brigit Edelmann

A video installation in a wooden box - containing a stop motion film of a piece performed at Walcot Chapel by Brigit and

three other women.

 

"The subject here is presence and absence, and what comes after absence.

 

"Life is sometimes like a theatre. We are the main players on our stage, but what happens after the curtain falls? What remains then?"

 

 

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