Otherlands

About

Steeped in tradition and the art of story-telling, Otherlands showcases six UK-based artists whose work celebrates folklore of the past and present-day, often straddling both simultaneously. Through the eyes of the artists, the show celebrates the energy, variety, and idiosyncrasy of the resurgence of folklore in contemporary art.

Andrea Gomis is a Catalan American artist based in London. Her sculptures harken back to traditions of the erotic and grotesque. Growing up between Catalunya and Colorado, her work incorporates the aggressive subtexts of American life and the surrealist nature of Catalan culture. While many of her pieces are explicit, they always include a more innocent side– the sculpture turned in a certain direction displays the grotesque, while turned in another can offer a seemingly innocent object, thus evoking the multifaceted nature of folklore.

Faye Eleanor Woods is a Scottish artist whose work acts as a love letter to the much loved establishment the British pub. To Woods the pub represents a state of emotional freedom where the act of dancing, singing and drunken debauchery transcends time itself. The pub is a representation of the inner psyche, the room within rooms that is teetering on the edge of disaster and joy. Wood’s paintings often contain complex and humourous narratives, reading like a tale when viewed in unison.

Lucie Gray is an east London based painter who primarily works with acrylic on wood board and canvas. Her work creates a world in which naivety dominates and childhood creatures roam. Currently her pieces focus on the power of innocence and on finding the fairytales that lie beneath the world as it is now. Much like true fairy tales, Lucie aims to sew the inconclusive threads underlying our need to find expression.

Matt Macken lives and works in Leicester, his painterly process aims to explore intimate and personal aspects of the human condition. Collecting artistic inspiration from his own memories, photographs, social media platforms, and inbox messages, Macken amalgamates snippets of everyday experiences into his subject matter. Macken works in series, creating various artworks at a time. This leads to recurring symbols, themes, and narratives in his work. Macken has recently exhibited with Delphian Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, and Arusha Gallery. His works are owned by various collectors and collections around the world, including the Soho House permanent art collection.

Theo Bardsley is a young rising figurative painter from London whose large-scale portraits depict Fauvist-esc scenes of past and present worlds. Taking inspiration from his own life, Theo’s work merges the everyday with the historical, bridging the gap between past and present. Having studied History of Art at the University of Manchester, Theo draws from a plethora of influences from the art historical canon.

Zayn Qahtan is a painter, drawer and sculptor based between Bahrain and London. Her work is a dance between what is seen and what is felt, compiling a personal mythology along the way. Drawing on ancient cultures and nature’s diverse ecosystems, Zayn forms visual stories which seem to exist in the twilight zone – too distorted to be real, too familiar to be a dream. Working on recycled materials, and hand making her own paints and tools from plants and minerals, Zayn allows the works to take on a life of their own, vibrating true with the energy of the land itself.