Curious Nature
7th
February – 9th April 2008
An
exhibition of drawings, paintings, photographs and
sculpture
by
artists discovering the unexpected in landscape and
nature.
Work
by Leonora Chan, Helena Goldwater, Andy Harper,
Nadège Mériau, Melanie Stidolph and John
Timberlake
Collyer
Bristow Gallery, Collyer Bristow LLP, 4 Bedford Row,
London WC1R 4DF
Viewing
by appointment Monday to Friday during office
hours.
The darker side of nature is explored by each of the
artists in these selected works. Helena
Goldwater
creates her own botanical studies, exquisitely
rendered in watercolour paint. Each depicted
sample is familiar yet altered, hinting at some
kind of strange science. Whilst referencing 18th
and 19th Century studies these images are
extremely contemporary, suggestive of our ability
to radically alter the nature of our
environment. Nadège
Mériau has
taken a similar viewpoint, in certain cases
isolating individual plants and their plant
system, in others exposing the surreal nature of
plants simply though the direction of her lens.
Throughout her work Mériau pushes context and
composition to reveal new understandings.
Both Leonora Chan and
Melanie
Stidolph use
photography to give us a new angle on the familiar
landscape. Chan’s landscapes are highlighted
with an eerie, effervescent light that makes an
ordinary hedgerow or shoreline appear magically
staged. In fact these are all lit
‘naturally’ by light pollution. This
unsettling fact brings in to question the human
and urban impact on nature. Where Chan uses long
exposures to capture the artificial light Melanie
Stidolph shoots off reels of film to capture that
moment when life itself seems a little off key. A
large photograph of undergrowth will suddenly
reveal a hare sitting, just off centre. The viewer
comes across the unexpected detail and invariably
discovers more on each viewing.
contd....
