SOL FORCE ARTIST: Gordon Ellis Brown

‘ANOTHER TEQUILA SUNRISE’ - SOL FORCE

Raising over £3,500 in aid of Freedom from Torture, Sol Force was the first spectacular Summer Solstice “rampant solstice celebration” outdoor art event held at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens in Cornwall. Jesse Leroy-Smith kindly asked Gordon Ellis-Brown to participate with one of his Final Frontier pieces. ‘Another Tequila Sunrise’ was placed within a hollow in the undergrowth of Tremenheere Gardens, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. 

GORDON ELLIS-BROWN

Tribes. Honour. Celebration.

Origin. Authenticity. Integrity.

Land. Ocean. Space.

Gordon Ellis-Brown opens a dialogue between ancient history, pop culture, space science and how he views the future of planet earth. Focusing on each image before relocating its context is a way of celebrating the enduring materiality of images whilst safeguarding the vulnerability of others. This dissonance subverts, disrupts and enriches our recognition of the visual world.

His practice was born from growing up in a seaside hotel during the late 1960’s and early 70’s, surrounded by an extended family of transient strangers, with little room to call his own. During his early years, the Apollo space missions and the iconic western movies were indelibly etched onto his mind, a form of escapism, but the extraordinary and unworldliness also captured his imagination - planets, alien visitations, cowboys and indians.

From a childhood by the sea, to his later travels in California and New Mexico, Ellis-Brown’s experiences have inspired him to seek the common ground, by revealing fundamental truths in conflicting beliefs and cultural traditions. He draws on his graphic design roots, using iconic imagery, immersive colour, symbolism - quite commonly in the form of petroglyphs and photography, using a complex process of paint, pigments, encaustic and collage to create his work.

Gordon has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. His work is held in collections throughout the world and he is a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists.

ARTIST'S WEBSITE: GORDON ELLIS BROWN

SOL FORCE ARTIST: Seamus Moran

Artist statement.  

Seamus Moran uses combinations of seemingly incompatible ideas to produce his sculptures. Inspired by childhood memories of museum visits, fossils and armour, his industry background in mould-making ensures that his work is convincing & meticulously constructed. For many years he has worked by casting knots salvaged from dead trees and turning them into complex organic abstracts.   His recent work has focused on more figurative themes, often with a strong social comment. Very different in some ways to his previous body of work, but retaining the realism and the feeling that his pieces could be museum exhibits from a parallel universe. Moran shares his own insights on the human condition through his dark, slightly humorous sculptures, introducing questionable values by the rethinking of familiar objects.  

Bio

Seamus Moran was born in 1963 in Burton on Trent. He graduated with a Ba (hons) in Ceramics with Glass from Birmingham polytechnic in 1984 and went on to work in the pottery industry in Stoke on Trent as a sculptor and mould-maker. He started exhibiting his own sculptures in galleries in 2002. His work has been shown around the UK and in 2008 won the People’s choice award at The National sculpture competition at Liverpool’s Bluecoat 2 gallery. In 2013 he was shortlisted for the Threadneedle prize at The Mall galleries in London for his work “Urban Burka”. “Harness” won best of show at the Passion for Freedom festival at the Embassy tea gallery in 2014 and has since been displayed at the Royal Armouries sites including a three month residency at The Tower of London. His work ”Decade” won best installation award at the NOAC in 2106.   He is currently a featured artist in the book “State of art : Sculpture & 3D #2” in the series from Barehill publishing. www.seamusmoran.com  

ARTISTS WEBSITE: www.seamusmoran.com  

SOL FORCE: Gillian Cooper

‘High on the Hill, Deep in the Valley’, oil on gesso canvas.  

Gillian Cooper, contributing artist will be showing a temporary installation in the Quiet Space at Tremenheere, entitled  ‘PASSING’, made using light and 50m stretch elastic.

'Passing’ is an ephemeral boundary, which catches, sifts, and allows light to pass whilst also casting a shadow on the other side, much like a dream catcher catches nightmares and lets dreams through to the sleeping, 

Installation, painting, drawing and printmaking explore the point between dichotomies; internal/external, public/private, sinister/beauty. Domestic materials and objects sited in both galleries/marginal spaces (window ledges, cracks in floorboards), appear to intervene; to emerge from the fabric of the building/landscape. Often in series; hand-made; temporary, transitory, at times subjected to the elements; to audience interaction. Influences: female, gender, social, cultural, domestic, temporary, minimalism, colour. 

The Edge of the Pond, Oil on gesso canvas

Gillian Cooper Artist Curator

ARTISTS WEBSITE:  www.gilliancooper.org.uk

www.lovefromtheartist.com/Artists/west-penwith/gillian-cooper

www.facebook.com/gilliancooperart

https://www.axisweb.org/p/gilliancooper

'Amnesia', 300 cotton cloths, royal icing, food colour. Installed at  Temporary Sculpture Trail. 

SOL FORCE ARTIST: Karen Lorenz

Book of Being And Becoming  Book Of Being And Becoming,

Artist Book  

(dimension   21.5(h) x 15.5(w) cm mixed media on paper, 96 pages.

Return

(video animation, wooden box)  

Return is a short and humorous animation about the return of the feminine, and the ancient wisdom of creation, instinct, intuition, and sensuality.  

I work with a variety of media, with drawing, artist books, painting, animation, and lately turned to interactive sound installations. This is not a question of aesthetics but the search for a message, or as John Berger once contemplated ‘a form of language that cannot otherwise be represented, and certainly not spoken’.  

What brings the disciplines together is the ambiguity of the surface. Paper, canvas, projections, in fact any surface is seen as an edge of interactivity.  Like a membrane the surface can hide, hold back or disguise, and yet at the same time receive, reveal, throw forth and disclose something previously hidden from our view. 

I live and work in Newlyn.

Karen Lorenz Visual Artist

ARTIST'S WEBSITE:  www.karenlorenz.co.uk