ZEINAB ALIZADEH FARD, BEN RAK, NAOMI BISHOP & LORNA GREAR
Graphics
Working primarily within the practices of painting and printmedia, each of these artists aim to create their own visual language through the use of different motifs, geometric elements, graphic designs and metaphysics to explore their own personal journeys and the mysterious nature of the unexplained, unexplored and otherwordly sensations. Their works also explore the blurring of genuine and performed gestures, the displacement of mark making and originality and employ an element of chance based processes through the movement of paint, print, light and shadow, pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved on a two dimensional surface.
Zeinab Alizadeh Fard “The Journey home” Safar-bar-vata. “Each step I take is intentional with full of passion. I wonder through the deep forest and I have my map in my pocket. My bare feet feel the ground and my lungs are full of air. The woods are dark, and full of moments to be discovered. I watch my step and stay quite, as traps are everywhere. They are here to take up my strength. I am alive. The forest doesn’t know that every fall and every trap makes me stronger. It’s because I remember myself and I believe in the path. Home is right at the end of the forest, I know it by heart and I step into my destiny.” Zeinab has created a three year body of work which looks at the path she has taken home uses Persian geometric art as the basis of her work which acts the door to each of her artworks. There are six pieces, and each piece marks a step towards her journey home.
Ben Rak Ben’s practice is an attempt to develop a conceptual, visual language, which metaphorically explores the identity politics of otherness and the act of ‘passing’ as somebody else. He positions mechanically and autographically generated elements in diametric opposition on the same image plane, defying the viewers expectation of what is reproduced and what is authentic, blurring the lines between genuine and performed gestures, and to what lengths the artist must go to displace the origin of the marks and successfully ‘pass’ himself as the original.
Lorna Grear Uses paintings and graphic designs to emphasise ideas of process, order and the painterly sensation. Paralands – Latest body of work – is a play on the idea of paradise and landscape, interested in the playscape of the imagination and these images also have a connection of the metaphysical, using a type of ‘mandala’ to represent the universe, recent images also contain dogs running through the space.
Naomi Bishop The unexplained and unexplored are recurring themes in her work. She is interested in exploring darkness, silence, mysterious events and peripheral landscapes and otherworldly places. Is interested in the ways we are shaped by the natural environment and the ways in which natural and celestial phenomena are interpreted and developed into belief systems
Since undertaking residencies in Finland, she has continued to work with mysterious landscapes, symbols and ritual objects, making images of memorial stones forest burial grounds and illusory thresholds and objects and places that might be used for conjuring supernatural forces.
Chance plays a part in the creation of these paintings, from initially finding an image or shape with which to work, through to the movement of the paint and the fall of light and shadows across the painting on the studio table.
