Exhibition

Laura Lancaster | Rachel Lancaster: Cadence

19 Jan 2023 – 4 Mar 2023

Regular hours

Thursday
10:00 – 18:00
Friday
10:00 – 18:00
Saturday
10:00 – 18:00
Sunday
10:00 – 18:00
Tuesday
10:00 – 18:00
Wednesday
10:00 – 18:00

Free admission

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WORKPLACE

London
England, United Kingdom

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Workplace is delighted to present Cadence - an exhibition of new paintings by Newcastle based artists Laura Lancaster and Rachel Lancaster that extends each artists' preoccupation with ambiguous found imagery as a catalyst for heightened dramatic states.

About

Workplace | 50 Mortimer Street, W1W 7RP

Opening reception: Thursday 19 January, 6 - 8pm

Exhibition opening hours: Tue - Sat, 10 - 6pm

Workplace is delighted to present Cadence - an exhibition of new paintings by Newcastle based artists Laura Lancaster and Rachel Lancaster that extends each artists' preoccupation with ambiguous found imagery as a catalyst for heightened dramatic states. This exhibition will be the first to exhibit the work of the identical twin sisters in direct relation to one another.

Though identical 'mirror' twins, who share a studio in Newcastle, Rachel and Laura Lancaster have both developed distinct strategies for making work. Laura Lancaster prepares for painting through an analytical investigation of the structure and composition of her chosen image which she then crops, photocopies and makes drawings of to distance her work from its source. Colour is reintroduced and a palette is carefully mixed, she then works with an alla prima (wet-on-wet) process in a single sitting, allowing the spontaneity of her mark making to hold a moment in dynamic tension. In contrast to this, Rachel Lancaster builds her paintings incrementally over time, applying multiple thin layers of oil paint to accrue on the canvas, creating a layered array of optical effects - the immediacy of the paint's surface playing off against the hazy, half-remembered qualities characteristic of her chosen images. She manipulates colour and utilises cropping and mark-making techniques to play upon the latent, dreamlike sense of otherness found in cinema, reimagining this upon the canvas.

The figure is central to the work of Laura Lancaster, its presence intensified by the opposing entropic force of abstraction which perpetually subsumes and engulfs the protagonist. Images that are of their era - located in time through incidental clues such as clothing, pose, and contingent detail - are monumentalised by Laura through painting. Rendered ambiguous through the looseness of her brushwork, images gleaned from found photographic images are dissociated from their specific context and orphaned from their original narrative to be re-presented as fragments. Through this process of isolation and dislocation her works become uncanny and symbolic, operating as signifiers of a wider, collective memory and a shared existential consciousness.

Rachel Lancaster isolates imagery that she finds in popular culture such as video, TV and from her own photographs of objects. She draws upon film theory and in particular the Hitchcockian use of the MacGuffin - an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself. Rachel Lancaster is indebted to the painterly tradition of still life, and in particular vanitas works - symbolic still lifes that communicate earthly transience and the inevitability of death. Rachel depicts objects as detailed fragments divorced from greater narratives, rendering those fragments both descriptive and abstract, ambiguous and open-ended; the close-up texture of a slice of cake, for example, or an unlabelled parcel, uncannily illuminated, playfully enigmatic.

In Western musical theory, a cadence (Latin cadentia, "a falling") is the end of a phrase in which the melody or harmony creates a sense of full or partial resolution. Both Laura and Rachel Lancaster's work present imagery that suspend fleeting temporal moments in a psychologically charged state. Their strategic use of ambiguity creates the potential for unresolved momentary fragments of a larger story to take centre stage, and creates a resonant pause that allows deeper emotional undercurrents to come forth and find resolve.

For all press inquiries please contact: press@workplace.art

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What to expect? Toggle

Exhibiting artistsToggle

Laura Lancaster

Rachel Lancaster

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