Places Among the Stars

About

If you have ever looked up on a clear night and seen a blanket of stars it is not hard to be moved by the vastness and the beauty of the night sky. It is no surprise that astronomy has been of interest to artists for centuries: Leonardo di Vinci owned a copy of Ptolemy’s “Cosmography”, as well as a book by the medieval Persian astronomer Abu Mashar and one of the most recognizable works of all time Van Gogh’s Starry sky is a swirling depiction of the stars above Arles.

Places Among the Stars is a new exhibition at Lacey Contemporary Gallery featuring contemporary painter Pandora Mond’s newest collection of Exoplanet paintings, alongside The Royal Society of British Sculptors’ fellow Almuth Tebbenhoff, who will be exhibiting a selection of works from her Empty Spheres series (sculptures inspired by lunar eclipses).

Places Among the Stars will bring the great vastness and humbling beauty of the cosmos, into Holland Park’s Lacey Contemporary Gallery, giving the viewers an opportunity to get lost in space.

Places Among the Stars will be exhibited at Lacey Contemporary Gallery in Holland Park between the 8th – 25th June 2016. The exhibition will open with a private view with the artists on Wednesday 8th June between 6-9pm. For more information and high-res images contact tessa@laceycontemporarygallery.co.uk

Places Among the Stars will exhibit six large-scale paintings by Pandora Mond. These paintings are a product of a year-long residency at Exeter University. Pandora worked directly with the Astrophysics department, who during her residency, were focusing their research on extra solar planets. With the support and encouragement of Professor Isabelle Baraffe, Pandora created ten paintings on custom-made circular canvases. Thick with layers of paint and ranging from serene cream “other Earths” to dynamic night skies punctuated with the lights of human activity, Pandora’s brushstrokes describe new world’s fresh with opportunity and adventure.

Born in London, Pandora’s Great Great Grandparents Ludwig and Frida Mond were great collectors of Old Masters paintings, donating their large collection to the National Gallery of Art, known as the ‘Mond Collection’. Pandora studied in Oxford at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. Drawing inspiration from the natural world, a move to Exmoor meant Pandora could be surrounded by the beautiful and diverse landscape that is so often the feature of her work.

Pandora’s paintings are gateways to a vast plain, focusing less on the physicality of her subjects they instead emanate a feeling, a mood. Hypnotic and hinting at a larger possibility the viewer emerges themselves in the subtle nuances of the work. The abstraction of her subject matter emphasizes its vastness and gives the work a sense of infinity.

Almuth Tebbenhoff was born in Fürstenau in north-west Germany. In 1969, a year after completing her secondary schooling, she moved to the UK where she studied ceramics at the Sir John Cass School of Art. Following that, she set up a studio in London and for the next six years made studio ceramics, while she developed her ideas for sculpture.

  Almuth has had a long-term muse in the Cosmos, and its presence can be seen in a decade of her work. The Empty Spheres series being exhibited at Lacey Contemporary revolves around the idea of negative space, which is a reference to the visual effect of the dark side of the moon. The result is pleasing part spheres that hint at a hidden dense mass. The infinity of space makes for a challenging but rewarding area of inspiration, and Almuth’s handles this vast topic with experience and gusto.

Almuth studio is full of ideas both complete and in motion there is a sense of both playfulness and obsession in the pieces scattered around her workshop. Geometrical models representative of the expected area of a circle stand next to clay blocks covered in bubbling swirling forms. Almuth has an instinctive ability to find the harmony between her subjects and her materials. She approaches her raw materials with confidence and imagination.

Almuth has exhibited international and received commissions from clients based all over the world, the universality and simplicity in her work transcends culture and time making for highly collectable pieces.