TO THE EAST THE MIRROR

About

Envoi Imprisoned by four walls (To the North, the crystals of non-knowledge a landscape to be invented to the south reflective memory, to the east the mirror to the west stone and the song of silence) I wrote messages but received no reply - Octavio Paz To the East the Mirror is a group show bringing together recent work by six early career artists from Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester and London and makes physical a dialogue that has been developing since 2009 through the pages of a series of artists' books. Through these books the practices of Monica Rivas, Kasia Coleman, Debra Welch, Victoria King, Fiona Meakin and Thea Willcocks are drawn into conversation culminating in this exhibition. As a group they are interested in how visual ideas merge, clarify and change, embracing moments of agreement as well as conflict and difference. Exploring themes of narrative and non-narrative, surface, obsession, loss, landscapes, mapping, veiling and unveiling and hidden meanings. The artists' styles, processes and initial concerns vary but the books reveal parallel thoughts, overlaps occur and one line may trigger the beginning of a new landscape.