R.S (Steve) Mitchell Exhibition: HORIZON

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HIGH ST, MORETON-IN-MARSH GLOUCESTERSHIRE, GL56 0AF

www.celialendis.com

TEL: 01608 650 852

EMAIL: gallery@celialendis.com

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 14 SEPTEMBER 2012

R.S Mitchell’s Cinematic Paintings: A New Horizon in Contemporary British Art HORIZON by R.S (Steve) Mitchell Exhibition opens 6pm, Saturday 29 September 2012 Celia Lendis Contemporary, High St, Moreton-in-Marsh, The Cotswolds, UK, GL56 0AF Exhibition continues until 7 November 2012

R.S Mitchell, We Rolled Out of the Blinding Light (2012), oil on linen, 115cm x 315cm (detail)

“This is the wasteland of man’s technological dreaming, where once futuristic and improbable devices for seeing, measuring, filming, capturing, taming and knowing the world now lie eternally trapped and captured within an image of their own making. And when we, embodied as we are in the artist’s painted figure, stand within ‘the artist’s vision’, we are able to see the construction of his world as he has devised it.” - Celia Lendis, Gallery Director. This upcoming exhibition of paintings, HORIZON, includes a new version of Mitchell’s original 1976 Self Portrait, updated to reflect the artist’s life and the world as he sees it now. The painting is an apt emblem for Mitchell’s constancy, commitment and determination to fulfill his early potential and become the significant British artist he is destined to be.


R.S Mitchell, Self Portrait (2012), oil on linen, 130cm x 210cm

Thirty-six years ago at the Leicester College of Art & Design, one of Steve Mitchell’s lecturers rescued a torn, discarded canvas from the pile of studio rubbish left at the end of term. It was the first version of Mitchell’s Self Portrait, a hyper-realistic painted montage of objects and artistic images symbolising the student’s artistic life and intent. The painting was there because, after it had been completely ignored in an end of term Crit session, a disgruntled Mitchell had tossed it out and decided to quit art school, feeling his work wasn’t good enough to continue. The lecturer’s reaction to finding the canvas was one of shock ...the reason the work had been ignored was that staff thought Mitchell had pinned cut-out magazine images to his canvas; nobody had realised the work was an actual oil painting. Persuaded to stay on and finish the work, Mitchell gained his degree and was immediately offered a job at the BBC by Brian Bishop, regarded as the finest scenic painter in the world at that time. From there, a lengthy career in television and film saw Mitchell work on countless Hollywood and British blockbusters, mostly as a scenic painter, and mostly in inaccessible, improbable, locations around the globe or in studios such as Pinewood near London, where his canvas was a massive 150-metres wide and a cherry picker his normal means of reaching it. Film and optical technology has changed so extensively over the last three decades and Mitchell’s inside position has meant he has been a front-runner in the use of each new or innovative piece of equipment as it has come into existence. While his life has been consumed with developing new ways to capture and turn the three-dimensional world into two-dimensions for the screen and with the construction of vast panoramas for BAFTA winning movies, Mitchell’s early aspirations of being a professional artist and expressing his own visions of the world and our place within it have remained just as strong as they always were. Mitchell still works in film, although more often these days as a concept designer, while his work as a professional visual artist increasingly devours his time due to the ever-increasing interest in his conceptually complex and exquisitely executed cinematic paintings.

To arrange an interview with the artist, or for high-resolution images or more information, please contact the gallery on 01608 650 852.


R.S Mitchell, Self Portrait (2012), oil on linen, 130cm x 210cm (detail)

“In Self Portrait (2012), one can see how Mitchell lays bare the tools of the artist’s trade: the trappings and the kit which includes, aside from physical objects, an actual composition based on the ‘golden section’ and references to prior visions of artists who have inspired him: Kubrick, Caravaggio, Rothko, Friedrich, Arnolfini and Bocklin. All this exists alongside the more prosaic and material tools, such as rabbit skin glue, brushes, thinners and oils, and a protractor. “The promise of discovery and the search for a brave new world emanate from the painting and it is clear that Mitchell has begun his next great adventure; the world has opened up all over again and is waiting to be conquered.” - Celia Lendis, Gallery Director.

R.S Mitchell, Short Walk (2012), oil on linen, 100cm x 210cm

HORIZON by R.S (Steve) Mitchell Exhibition opens 6pm, Saturday 29 September 2012 Celia Lendis Contemporary, High St, Moreton-in-Marsh, The Cotswolds, UK, GL56 0AF Exhibition continues until 7 November 2012

To arrange an interview with the artist, or for high-resolution images or more information, please contact the gallery on 01608 650 852.


Exhibition Statement by Gallery Director, Celia Lendis In this exhibition, Mitchell exposes the apparatus, the traps and trappings, the bored assistants working all hours of the night and day for demanding directors and relentless producers, all the ‘kit’ and people who work behind the scenes to construct the images we see in film and television. His focus is to uncover everything that goes into the production of those vast panoramic landscapes, which only appear for a second or two as a background in some great movie, as a distant horizon in some great celluloid dream, as some fleeting vision in a story far greater than the fragment depicted here. We become the figure in the paintings, placed in an in-between world that is neither in the distant landscape that fills the canvas, nor quite in the real world of the gallery, where we still stand as viewer. We become aware that we are seeing something that someone has seen before us. Like a hall of mirrors, these paintings promise boundless borders and endless infinities – there are simply no limits to the world laid out before us. Mitchell’s use of dual light sources (a natural light that emanates from the distant sky at start or end of the day and artificial light from the assistant’s IPad or camera in this case) helps to collapse the sense of eternity and time into the painting, as well as space. This is a world that has been here long before us and will continue for millennia after we have gone. Mitchell’s landscapes are a paradox, a trick, a memory. These are not landscape paintings, these large cinematic paintings are about the construction of the image of landscape and, as we become the human figure within the painting’s surface, so we become the subject of the work and we begin to realize that we are being watched … We are the subject of a sight that sees us seeing the painting, seeing ourselves in the painting, seeing the world as the construction of someone else’s vision. And when we depart from these works and return to the mundanity of our own lives and the smallness and safety of our garden view, we leave with a slightly unsettled feeling …. a feeling that something, or someone, is following us back into our own life. Celia Lendis, September 2012.

R.S Mitchell, Glass Matte (2012), oil on linen, 135cm x 270cm


NOTES FOR EDITORS: •

R.S (Steve) Mitchell was born in Walls End in 1954 and has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Leicester. His career began at the BBC in 1977 before he moved on to become one of the UK’s leading scenic artists, which led more recently into concept design. Mitchell has worked on more than a hundred feature films including Harry Potter (1 & 2), Batman, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, 101 Dalmations, Pirates of the Caribbean and the soon-to-be released Great Expectations by Director Mike Newell. This is Steve Mitchell’s third solo exhibition and the third at Celia Lendis Contemporary. For more information on previous exhibitions, please contact the gallery: www.celialendis.com.

Celia Lendis Contemporary was established in 2010 and represents artists of integrity whose work expresses an authentic vision, commitment to craftsmanship and an intellectual engagement with the world. The gallery presents a changing exhibition program of established and emerging artists, both British and international, and represents a number of established and emerging artists in the UK. We exhibit in London and at Art Fairs and other venues throughout the UK. The gallery is a member of LAPADA Modern and CINOA International Association of Fine Art & Antique Dealers.

VISITOR INFORMATION: Address: Contact:

Celia Lendis Contemporary, High St, Moreton-in-Marsh, GLOS, UK, GL56 0AF Tel: 01608 650 852 Web: www.celialendis.com Email: gallery@celialendis.com

Hours:

Monday 10am-5pm Tuesday CLOSED Wednesday 10am-5pm Thursday 10am-5pm Friday 10am-5pm Saturday 10am-5pm Sunday 12pm-4pm (April-Nov)

Access:

Trains run regularly to and from Moreton-in-Marsh Station to Oxford City and on to Paddington Station, London (on the Worcester line). The gallery is 500 metres walk from the station and is located directly opposite the junction of Station Road and the High Street.

Parking:

Free parking is available throughout Moreton-in-Marsh, except on Tuesdays when a central market is held and parking is restricted (the gallery is closed on Tuesdays).


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