'Wild Wild Waves' by Zoe Benbow

About

The show focuses on a series of paintings developed from drawings of the coastal landscape of County Mayo Ireland, made during a residency in Spring 2011. This visually compelling series of work plays with colour and process to engage the audience with an unfamiliar space. The large-scale oils communicate a sense of awe whilst celebrating an enjoyment of the visual world. Zoe Benbow has worked extensively with landscapes, mapping and exploring her surroundings and questioning how we see the world and our relationship to it. Her latest series of paintings take reference from the European landscape genre. Their aim is to subvert our traditional perspective by placing this genre in the context of our current environmental climate. Benbow encourages the observer to examine the established perceptions of our place in the world, shifting and unravelling our position as a detached observer. Benbow's work adheres to the notion that human activities do not only affect the surrounding landscape but are part of it. This echoes the words of Marcus Chown who observes that we are made of the ‘same stuff as the stars'. Zoe Benbow's paintings aim to challenge our sense of separateness from our surrounding environment.