Beyond Confinement

About

Members of the Altogether At Once collective were initially brought together by Artquest London during the Covid lockdowns to foster connections and dialogue between artists. The impact of physical and mental isolation was a major concern for artists at this time and their regular online meetings were a means of combating this. The strong connections they made during this period of constraint helped sustain their individual practices while bonding them together as a group. Their meeting was under conditions of confinement and restraint, so it seems very appropriate for them that their first group show should be in the cells of a former police station.

The work they are showing reflects, in many and various ways, the conditions of restraint and confinement present here in the architecture and history of a former police station. Although they don’t pretend to be speaking through their work for prisoners who were kept in these cells each artist has responded to this environment by inquiring and reflecting on ideas of restriction, constraint, freedom and connectivity. The individual notes in each space reflect their interpretations of this challenge.

Using a variety of styles and techniques, the artists will transform the walls and prison cells into a space of expression. Some will create site-specific installation to respond to the strong architecture and former purpose of the building while others will re-contextualise their work in the light of the history of the building.

Each artist brings their unique experience and artistic practice to bear on these spaces of confinement and considers what brings connection and breaks walls down. From bold abstraction to intricate representational works, each artist invites the viewer to engage in a personal dialogue with the artwork and with the space around them.

It is a unique show in a unique environment. Join us in exploring the power of painting to transcend physical boundaries and connect us all together at once.

Altogether at Once Statement

We are a multigenerational and diverse group of artists who believe that painting remains a relevant and enduring artistic medium in which the spirit of our times manifests itself. As images continue to be the most feverishly consumed objects of our technological existence, the uniqueness of painting lies in its capacity to oscillate between imagination, memory, reality, and in the possibility it offers to present them all together, at once. As a group, we do not intend to constitute a movement.Nor are we compelled to a homogeneous stylistic approach. On the contrary, what loops us together is the lack of any adherence to a linguistic framework that would explain our methods. If anything, we are attracted to that which cannot be categorised, to that that is different.
With the only purpose of exciting the senses, provoking thought, and arousing emotion, we paint. Through colour, matter and form we aspire to frame a sensation and to offer a meaningful thought traversed by intuition. We remain stubbornly convinced that a painting frames a unique collision between the subjective material and the desire to materialize a vision, to depict a mental object, evoke a memory, or visualise an original commentary of our everyday existence. Our response to the canon, as an improbable group looped together by the sheer attraction to otherness and difference, is to blow it apart altogether by rejecting any similarity between us or between our work.

No dogma, no language, no style. We are only bound by painting.