CONGRATULATIONS ANDREW HLADKY & STEPH GOODGER: beep2012 PEOPLE'S PRIZE WINNERS
Andrew Hladky It Was Not There
Steph Goodger Pandemonium, The Chopping and Boiling
This year’s Beep Peoples Prize is sponsored by the Mission Gallery.
Mission Gallery is one of Wales’ best adapted spaces for the contemporary arts. Mission Gallery has developed a reputation for dynamic and distinctive programming, to present excellence across the visual arts, applied arts and craft, from across Wales and beyond.
With exhibition space, craft space, learning resources, events, residency opportunities and more, Mission Gallery provides the local and wider community with opportunities to develop their understanding and knowledge of art, providing a collective experience in which visitors can immerse themselves in; exhibitions that push the boundaries of visual art; purchase cutting edge design and contemporary craft and engage in friendly conversation with art led individuals. Mission Gallery seamlessly provides raw creative energy, an exceptional place to shop for every price range, and a commitment to learning, ensuring every age group is welcome.
Mission Gallery is delighted to be supporting Elysium and the BEEP International Painting Prize, in sponsoring the Peoples Prize. Mission Gallery has a long history of offering first solo shows to emerging artists and in particular painters; Neale Howells, Sue Williams, Warren Williams and Philip Nicol have all had their first professional exhibition at Mission Gallery, and painters including Jonathan Powell, Glenys Cour, Keith Bayliss, Osi Rhys Osmond and Iwan Bala have also exhibited at Mission Gallery.
This continues in 2012 with the exhibition ‘Nature Illuminated’ by Swansea based painter, Katie Allen, whose work has been described by Curator Anders Pleass as being, ‘Firmly grounded in the traditions of the studio… her paintings are immensely seductive to the eye. They remind us of the timeless bond of art and beauty. Each is a masterful exercise in the harmonies of colour, scale and form, and demonstrates a remarkable visual acuity.
Katie Allen | Nature Illuminated 21 July – 2 September 2012 | Private View 7pm Saturday 21st July 2012
Firmly grounded in the traditions of the studio, Katie Allen's paintings are immensely seductive to the eye. They remind us of the timeless bond of art and beauty. Each is a masterful exercise in the harmonies of colour, scale and form, and demonstrates a remarkable visual acuity.
Her pictures derive from her immediate experience of nature, although given the complexity of the results, it is a paradox how informal yet truly mysterious this process is. Allen's practice is a prism through which what's 'out there' is refracted into a unique personal vision. Countless natural forms are boiled down to simple motifs, that are, each in their turn, redeployed in a tight and seamlessly orchestrated whole. Significantly, subtle variations of tone and colour are built up graphically, allowing for a plethora of historical and cultural references to jostle for attention across the picture plane: mosaic and stained glass, Persian and Indian miniatures, Arabic calligraphy, Viennese art deco, 70s psychedelia.
It is hard to conceive of these landscapes as real places. They are perhaps the idealised landscapes and vistas of the mind. They are backdrops to fairytales. However, unlike a proper fairytale they appear to contain no moral thus demonstrating a very modern indecision in which we all have a stake, between a landscape engineered in the mind, and one engineered in practical reality.
Anders Pleass Head of Exhibitions, Oriel Mostyn
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