Hello Carousel-Gemma Nelson

About

VEGAS Gallery is delighted to present Hello Carousel, the first London solo show of Young British artist Gemma Nelson. Since graduating the Slade School Of Fine Art in 2007, Nelson has received high acclaim. She was flagged as one of the most promising graduates of her year when featuring in the 2008 Bloomberg New Contemporaries Exhibition and since then has gone to be shortlisted for Saatchi Gallery's Four New Sensations and nominated as a finalist for the Nationwide Mercury Art Prize. Working in Indian inks and employing a range of mixed media such as sequins, Nelson dares to cross the taboo boundaries between craft and fine art, using thread and hair as paint to stitch into work and weaving cellular shapes into a complex tapestry. The canvases of vivid colour and patterns incorporate hidden imagery to create intricate layers of organic mythological creatures and landscapes in response to various themes such as female sexuality, fairytales and notions of webbing and nets. Hello Carousel, sees Nelson further explore these techniques to create a fairground of works with crumbling roller coasters, abandoned helter skelters and carousels. The signature extrovert patterns sprawl organically across clean white backdrops holding an almost child like sense of play and naivety, but within these colourful fragments is a definite undercurrent of psychedelic discord. The distorted structures rise, the cells of colour bubbling and multiplying, only to keel over and collapse. Nelson using her distinctive method makes the works feel kinetic, growing and receding across the gallery walls.