ART MATTERS

This month I’m going to be rounding up some of my recent creative activities over the last few months. I have been curating and touring a group show of paintings in Salford and Middlesbrough, which is set to travel to Swansea in 2022. The exhibition was titled Stand Close and Breathe Me In and was shown at Oceans Apart in June and July, and Pineapple Black in August and September.

Stand Close and Breathe Me In is a group exhibition of paintings which explores the collective spirit of small-scale imagery within the context of a painting-viewer relationship. These paintings draw you in. They initiate an intimate response and engage the viewer in the act of looking. They arrest us at close quarters via the smallest of painterly activities and devices. Each painting punctuates the next and radiates into the space and into each other. They converse and mingle, sending out messages like invisible rays. They enter the body through the eyes and remain there as propositions, questions and after-images.

These paintings remind us that ‘size isn’t everything’. Up close, we’re able to scrutinise content and the manner in which the paintings were made. We experience the surface as a consequence of process, feeling each painting’s meaning through its distinctive mode of making. At a distance, we witness the bigger picture, where the paintings converse silently at arm’s length, collaborating as dots and dashes and through repetition and strength in numbers. Approaching these paintings, they begin to reveal and conceal themselves simultaneously. Clarity is administered in their obscurity and abstraction before we back away to achieve a sense of perspective in the collective.

The exhibiting artists were Julian Brown, Kena Brown, Ruth Calland, Andrew Crane, Jeff Dellow, Lisa Denyer, Rosalind Faram, Susie Hamilton, Alex Hanna, David Lock, David Manley, me (Enzo Marra), Gideon Pain, Alison Pilkington, James Quin, Dan Samuel Thomas, Katie Trick, Rhys Trussler, Grant Watson, Lily-Ella Westacott, Casper White and Dylan Williams.

I am also one of the judges for the Lido Open 2021, which is set to result in a group exhibition of shortlisted artists and a solo show in 2022. This is a new gallery space directly opposite the iconic Margate Lido and entries will still be accepted until October 12. No entry fees, just participation fees for the selected artists. If you’re interested or tempted, you just need to email a biography and artist statement (300 words max), and up to three images complete with their titles, dimensions, materials, price and date of execution to thelidostores@gmail.com. The other judges are gallery owners Kristen Healy and Emma Curtis. If you have suitable 2D wall-based works, which don’t exceed 22 x 30cm, we look forward to looking through your entries very soon.

I will be exhibiting in the Lido Stores between September 16 & 26 in Sugar Cube, a group show, beforehand.