Substance & light

About

'Substance & Light'

Eleven Spitalfields present their new gallery space with a group exhibition of work by artists Anthony Eyton RA, Julie Held, and Clarisse d’Arcimoles

The exhibition is accompanied by a gallery publication entitled ‘Compendium’, with a foreword by Edwin Heathcote, architecture critic of The Financial Times

Location: 11 Princelet Street, London E1 6QH
Dates: Saturday 6th May – Wednesday 5th July 2017
Opening times: Tuesday – Sunday, 12 noon to 17.00 hrs, or by appointment
Contact: Margaret Dunn / T 0207 247 1816
Email: margaret.dunn@chrisdyson.co.uk / info@elevenspitalfields.com
(calls answered Monday – Friday, 9.30am to 5.00pm)
Website: elevenspitalfields.com

“Without light, no substance. From Giotto to Chardin and beyond, light illuminates, caresses and melts, conveying the most fleeting and deepest of feelings.” (Anthony Eyton RA)

Anthony Eyton RA

Eyton inherited a sense of light from his mother, the painter Phyllis Eyton. For the viewer, the meaning of Eyton’s work often seems ambiguous: is the painter communicating the intensity of the subject, or is light itself in fact the real subject? For Eyton, nature - or the symbiosis of substance and light - galvanises him into action. He prefers painting with oils, using a full palette, from Titanium White to deepest Black. The Brick Wall, 2000, is a brick-for-brick portrait denoting its subtle changes over time. It was painted from a distance of six feet and is a forensic exploration of light, revealing the tactile reality of the bricks themselves.

Eyton also turns his attention to another brick edifice, this time the gargantuan Bankside Power Station. Eyton painted the vast structure daily for several months, capturing the light filtering through to the rusting machinery within. Two pictures in this exhibition depict the chimneys seen through the latticework of iron girders, one in sunlight and one on a grey day. Both vividly convey the building’s mysterious, luminous presence.
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Anthony Eyton studied at Camberwell School of Art from 1947 to 1950, and taught at the Royal Academy Schools from 1964 to 1999. He has exhibited regularly in solo exhibitions at Browse & Darby, London since 1980, most recently in 2013. Eyton’s work has also been included in many key group exhibitions, including Drawings of People at the Serpentine Gallery (1976), British Painting 1952 to 1977 at the RA (1977), the Arts Council’s British Art Show (1979), the Hayward Annual (1982) and The Hard Won Image, at the Tate Gallery (1984).

Julie Held

For Held, life is akin to a tapestry, a series of interconnecting
warps and wefts. The recurring theme which has
preoccupied her throughout her working life is the idea
of fusing apparent opposites. Held paints a liminal world
somewhere between imagination and reality, mediated by
experience.

Drawing remains at the heart of Held’s practice, whether
working drawings for painting or stand-alone works.
London remains at the heart of Held’s subject matter –
lives lived, the extraordinary and the ordinary jostling for
recognition. This reflects her experience as a first generation
child born of refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.
Clash of cultures are more to do with big money and the
everyday person.

Held’s work offers interlocking motifs - the shop window,
the florist, friends, family. Working at different times of the
day and night, she captures different lights and palettes,
evoking what is strange and familiar, transmuting her
subjects in the process.

The work in this exhibition explores this sense of ‘seamless
dislocation’ that is the essence of the fragile cycle of our
lives.
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Held studied at Camberwell College of Arts and the Royal Academy
Schools, London. Exhibitions and awards include: The Royal
Academy Summer Exhibition, The London Group, The Jerwood
Drawing Prize, The Threadneedle Prize, Flowers Central, The
National Portrait Gallery and The Barbican, London, as well as solo
shows in Prague, Leipzig and Hamburg.

Clarisse d’Arcimoles

This exhibition comprises three parts: ‘I Wish You All’ is an
installation inspired by The Queen’s Christmas broadcasts
dating back to 1957 - investigating how The Queen's annual
Christmas message has reflected on world events and social
upheavals over six decades of change. ‘Forgotten Tale’ is
inspired by a 1902 black and white photograph of a povertystricken
family of hairbrush makers from Spitalfields.

The artist has painstakingly reconstructed authentic
domestic details, inviting the viewer to step through the
picture frame and be transported back to the monochrome
world of the Victorian era. The third element is a collection
of appropriated Victorian cabinet cards. Entitled ‘Forget
Nostalgia’, the artist casts herself as a sitter, recreating the
mood of Victorian portraiture through costume, tinted
make-up and pose, an intriguing way of experiencing time
through a different medium.

‘Forgotten Tale’ was last seen at The Photographers’ Gallery
in 2016.