SALON LOCALE

9 August - 2 September

Private view  8 August 6-9pm

A group show featuring 20 artists living and working in the Finsbury Park area, representing the diversity of talents, interests and artistic expressions around Finsbury Park.

Salon Locale artists are predominantly dealing with various notions of the human condition in the urban environment, its breakdown, and the possibility of real or fantastic escape.

Noa Lidor and Beate Frommelt explore the emotional landscape of dreams, fantasies and the barriers for communication using the delicate techniques of line drawings and print while Pablo Ferretti and Fran Ortega use bold brush strokes and Judith Burrows uses underwater photography to illustrate similar notions.

Rick Jensen, Graham Carrick, Andy Wicks and Richard McConnell all show empty spaces where the evidence of human activity is clear in the environment but no faces are visible while Jules Boote and Miriam Nabarro are interested in the moments where the natural world is threatening and overpowering the human existence.

Katharine Codd and Christina Mitrentse look at the attempts to contain and control this natural world through topography and biology, creating quasi scientific images of maps, minerals and specimen plates but using traditional methods of drawing and painting.

More familiar, yet almost unrecognised, territories are represented in the works of Jono Kenyon and Judith Burrows who manipulate images of London landmarks and in John Crossley's 'pixelated' canvases of popular icons while Marianne Morild explores the surreal possibilities offered by the names given to local council estates.

The works of James Keniston, Maggie Jennings and Marc Summersgill offer some form of escape in the romantic, with images of fish, flowers and rolling hills; yet again, the absence of human presence adds something sinister to all these images. It is only in the abstract works of Richard Watkins that true escape is possible – a departure to a world where the human experience is irrelevant.

Curated by Shiri Shalmy.

Participating artists (in alphabetic order)

Andy Wicks               Beate Frommelt 
Christina Mitrentse    Fran Ortega
Graham Carrick        James Keniston
John Crossley           Jono Kenyon
Judith Burrows          Jules Boote
Katharine Codd         Maggie Jennings
Marc Summersgill     Marianne Morild
Miriam Nabarro         Noa Lidor
Pablo Ferretti            Richard McConnell
Richard Watkins        Rick Jensen