Exhibition

HOTHOUSE OPERA - by JESSICA HOLMES

18 Nov 2021 – 24 Nov 2021

Regular hours

Thu, 18 Nov
11:00 – 21:00
Fri, 19 Nov
11:00 – 16:00
Sat, 20 Nov
11:00 – 16:00
Sun, 21 Nov
11:00 – 16:00
Mon, 22 Nov
11:00 – 16:00
Tue, 23 Nov
11:00 – 16:00
Wed, 24 Nov
11:00 – 16:00

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Hepsibah Gallery

London, United Kingdom

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  • Tube: Goldhawk Road / Hammersmith
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The paintings sit on the cusp of exterior and interior, as rambling vegetation and peeling, decaying surface are brought together in painting, borrowing from Dutch Vanitas painting and Japanese screen design.

About

Exhibition: Hothouse Opera

Jessica Holmes’ practice is inspired by archival materials and historical sites, focussing on the point where the past invades the present, questioning memory and interpretation. It is a body of work inspired by forgotten and disused spaces and the half remembered traces of people and things. 

Hothouse Opera is an investigation of The Grange at Northington, Hampshire, where plants were transplanted to the hot house from their natural habitat by the botanist-adventurers of the 18th and 19th century - plants that flower at different times of year blooming together in a state of perpetual spring, created by the new technologies of nineteenth century, and recorded in the archive of the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew. 

These plants left tropical jungles and arid mountainsides and were catalogued and ordered at the heart of the British Empire. Yet how precarious the veneer of civilization is: the plants in this work are actively exploring – trying to find their ways around and through the paintings themselves. They sprout up through the composition to leave the work, negotiating the angles, holes and crevices of the ground up to the light, in a movement that records a pure wild state, beyond botanical analysis. 

The paintings sit on the cusp of exterior and interior, as rambling vegetation and peeling, decaying surface are brought together in painting, borrowing from Dutch Vanitas painting and Japanese screen design. 

Jessica Holmes lives and works in London. She studied at Wimbledon School of Art (1998-2002) and the Royal Academy Schools (2003-2006), and has exhibited extensively in the UK, as well as the USA, South Korea, France and Greece. 

For more details visit www.jessicaholmes.co.uk       

Instagram: jessicaholmesart

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