London is a pulsing, racing bustling, HUNGRY city and a melting hotpot of culture, character and commotion. I love the awake, alert, drama of London and Shoreditch more particularly. Anything goes here. The rules are for establishing. It's constantly in flux, moving, changing, shifting, thriving and humming with activity.
It's gritty, urban with pockets of wild. I love the chance gestures and random occurrences this environment offers up. So when the opportunity to exhibit at CnB Gallery arose I was immediately engaged.
Shoreditch is the epitome of my artistic interest, practice and approach:
UNTAMED, UNEXPECTED, SURREAL, AVANT GARDE, DISTINCTIVE, RIOTOUS, ESCAPE & PAUSE.
]]>London is a pulsing, racing bustling, HUNGRY city and a melting hotpot of culture, character and commotion. I love the awake, alert, drama of London and Shoreditch more particularly. Anything goes here. The rules are for establishing. It's constantly in flux, moving, changing, shifting, thriving and humming with activity.
It's gritty, urban with pockets of wild. I love the chance gestures and random occurrences this environment offers up. So when the opportunity to exhibit at CnB Gallery arose I was immediately engaged.
Shoreditch is the epitome of my artistic interest, practice and approach:
UNTAMED, UNEXPECTED, SURREAL, AVANT GARDE, DISTINCTIVE, RIOTOUS, ESCAPE & PAUSE.
They say if you live In Your heart you are always at home, and my heart resides here in many ways.
London life is far from still, that's perhaps why I try to capture moments that hold your attention, pause is a fundamental to absorbing things, ideas, concepts.
The atmosphere here encourages creativity
The environment supports creative.
My practice
As an explorer and storyteller, I hunt out magic and pause. How instinctive and involuntary it is. You can find it anywhere you seek it. I look for and look to create something disruptive, arousing, otherworldly, engaging the sublime and the beautiful, surreal and visceral.
I'm utterly fascinated by the anatomy of things, not least London Shoreditch, the inhabitants, nature itself. What it is to be human and alive.
The exhibition
I'm mesmerised by patterns, repetition, and habits; in nature, behaviour and sequences in maths. Its hypnotic. I see negative space as much as the positive juxtaposition.
The jostling salmon tide or stream suspended overhead, bisecting the gallery, is plotted to the Fibonacci sequence, underpinned by my fascination with patterns, nature, design and mathematics. As a tide of waves, rather than a spiral, it follows the capillary sequence. Whilst caught still, frozen in time, the pattern inherently moves.
The impossible hill of luggage sets the scene for a picnic atop. It's precarious, as life, like a rickety staircase, it seems to hang there like a stack of cards about to fall. And yet has a permanence and anchorage in time. It suggests travel and the shifting sands of time, it harks back to a time bygone in many ways, as all reflections are. It represents our memories, experiences and sentimentality. Our nostalgia. It speaks to embarking on momentous occasion, leaving home, university, weddings, holidays, moving house, great adventure. The transition of leaves talk of the seasons, the changing nature of things. The ageing process, maturing and improving before the final summit.
I find great inspiration in the exotic and the everyday, in fact I like to celebrate the everyday as if it were exotic, as a storyteller I create heroes or protagonists from the everyday
Take the humble aubergine, I find great beauty, humour and reflection in its character and like to present or re-present him to the world as a moment of pause, something worth contemplating. Most people may consider it purely food, a resource or commodity to eat, but I take more pleasure in considering its character, personality and qualities, it's smooth uninterrupted oil like pigments, it's peculiar asymmetry, it's synaesthesia for example, you can taste it long before you eat it.
IMAGINATION AND INVENTION MAKES THINGS VISIBLE
All the heroes cast around the room make up the key protagonists to my stories. They are part life drawing, observation and part imagination and invention. Perhaps the colours are skewed or the limbs accentuated to acknowledge the variation nature throws up. To bestow my own influence and interpretation, resisting pure observational drawing. My tutor used to despair with me in life drawing, 'draw what's in front of you' she would blast, and she was right, to a point, it's an important skillset to look and really see, one I've drawn on again and again. But so is breaking the rules, departing from the truth, imagining another reality, one where hawks carry cats off into the skies, where animated things are suspended mid air. A place where houseflies are regimented in sequence, order and uniform. A world that immediately encapsulates and ignores nature; bends fact and borrows from fiction, where anything goes. A world that throws expectation, calls it into question. A space where you confront things that might horrify, frighten or confound you but equally, delight, warm and make perfect sense.
The sanctuary is a secular space for contemplation, awe wonder pause and reflection. It heralds a holy trinity, 7 knolls ( a godly number ) household totems, a pew and kneelers for pause, meditation and prayer. It represents our deep-seated need for omnipotence, something to revere, a space to be still, a place to unite without the complication and judgement of religions. A place for gathering, common interest, a place where the everyday and the exotic collide. The perfect union of nature and object.
Nature the finest author, also has huge significance for me, it's imperfections alongside its mesmerising perfection.
I love the unexpected, surprise, especially if it's revealed on closer inspection, the bejewelled glinting wings of house flies on the pew cushions, the tiny tarantula hawk insects that look like delicate floral petals cascading down, the prisms of tessellating crane fly faceted like diamonds. The grasshoppers arranged like ears of corn. The unexpected context and application. Bringing The outside inside. Equally the unexpected, unapologetic impact of Scorpion Hawk squadrons, giant anatomical organs and personified vegetable ensembles.
The conflict of beauty and the grotesque presiding/coinciding simultaneously recurs throughout the exhibition and my practice.
The elephant in the room.
The matter of the heart:
This heart is made up of geometric patterns I've developed which express both the infinite order and chaos the intricacies of blood vessels and magnified blood platelets
The relief is made up of interior haberdashery from stately homes to regular houses, curtain tie backs and cushion fringes.
The anatomy of the heart, a symbol of love and beauty, a life giving force, and yet an abject, quite gruesome, apparatus, something which belongs on the inside of us, something bloody and messy and intricate and delicate, vulnerable and the seat or projection of the greatest emotion. Our driving force, it's slightly grotesque in form perfect in function, it sustains life itself. This sculpture was a real labour of love.
I'm also exhaustively interested in scale and proportion of the minuscule and magnificent, and playing with that order. The sublime scale of this giant bagpipe forces a confrontation, larger than life. It floods the room that barely contains it. It's poised between beats, still, but by the nature of its surface and human qualities it moves. It's almost musical, as an instrument.
Coinciding with London Design Festival and Shoreditch Design Triangle during September 2015, the hotly anticipated residency Untamed Company by Helen Spencer offers an intriguing narrative on the relationship between art and design. Visitors are promised a majestic, untamed experience of the creative inspiration that vitalises the artist’s family-run design house evespencer.com.
Untamed Company will see the traditional art setting of a formal gallery transformed into a decoratively staged spectacle, with Spencer’s protagonists cast through paintings, artwork and installations designed to encourage guests to pause, speculate and dream by challenging their own perceptions.
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London, Aug 13th 2015. Celebrated chef and renowned patron of the arts Mark Hix has announced a prominent series of exhibitions, set to reverberate through London’s art and design world. Opening the series, curated by CNB Gallery Director Rebecca Lidert, is Central St Martins’ ‘one to watch’ artist designer Helen Spencer on September the 9th. The roster also features the distinguished works of Miranda Donovan and Tim Noble.
Coinciding with London Design Festival and Shoreditch Design Triangle during September 2015, the hotly anticipated residency Untamed Company by Helen Spencer offers an intriguing narrative on the relationship between art and design. Visitors are promised a majestic, untamed experience of the creative inspiration that vitalises the artist’s family-run design house evespencer.com.
Untamed Company will see the traditional art setting of a formal gallery transformed into a decoratively staged spectacle, with Spencer’s protagonists cast through paintings, artwork and installations designed to encourage guests to pause, speculate and dream by challenging their own perceptions.
Central St Martins graduate and creative director Helen Spencer is one of a few artists handpicked by the prestigious art school as ‘ones to watch’. She explains, “I’ve been humbled and truly excited by the opportunity to work with Mark Hix again, and to get back to my fine art roots. The exhibition gives visitors a real insight into my world, what gives me reason to pause each day. It is said that the reality of art is the reality of imagination, and because my designs lean so heavily on my background I look to interiors as a canvas. eve spencer is a palette and philosophy for those who want to escape the beige and banal, and for those with a vision beyond the ordinary - but a distinct appreciation of the functional.”
Curated by Rebecca Lidert of Hix’s CNB Gallery at his Shoreditch restaurant, Tramshed, the exhibition is one that Hix is particularly excited to have at CNB Gallery, “I’ve been an admirer of Helen’s art and the eve spencer design house for the past couple of years – we’ve had an original artwork which inspired one of their most popular designs hanging in our Lyme Regis Guest House for some time.”
The exhibition transcends a simple collection of artwork, and finds expression in the suspended animations, oscillations, formations, witticisms, and riotous story telling of nature. With an abstract interpretation of space and movement, the gallery is transformed into a glimpse inside the world of eve spencer. Cascading salmon leaping through a waterfall draw visitors down to an Alice-in-Wonderland Syndrome inspired table setting that defies common perspective. All the while, original paintings of the distinctive eve spencer avant-garde collection peer in from the walls as a giant sculptural heart beats life into the gallery.
Helen graduated from Central St Martins with a degree in fine art, never leaving London’s pulsing art districts in the East of the city. Her work for the family run eve spencer design house - eve the name selected for its fond recurrence across generations of women in her family - is a sumptuous celebration of life and nature in all its awesome honesty. With wallpaper or fabric prints of geometrically aligned insects whose beauty belies their reputation, rich, colourful montages that rustle with autumnal leaves, and perfectly regimented vegetables that you can almost taste, the collection is for those who really see the wonder of life itself.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Private View: 16th September 2015, 6 30 - 8 30
If you would like to attend the Private View as a member of the press, please RSVP to studio@evespencer.com or rhiannon@cnbgallery.com
Exhibition Dates: 09/09/2015 – 03/10/2015
CNB Gallery
CNB Gallery is located in the basement of Mark Hix's Tramshed on Rivington Street, Shoreditch. A wide range of artists, from the established to the undiscovered, are given the opportunity to showcase their work with exhibitions changing every month. It is a celebration of Mark Hix’s love for art and hunger for innovation and creativity, a vision shared by Gallery Director Rebecca Lidert.
eve spencer
eve spencer was formed in late 2012. It is a family-run company based in London specialising in fabric and wallcoverings designed by creative director and artist Helen Spencer. The company also operates a bespoke service. Further information and high resolution images are available upon request.
For all sales enquiries please contact: studio@evespencer.com or call +44 (0) 208 279 3542
Or via the website www.evespencer.com
For all press enquiries, please contact:
Tom Spencer MPRCACadence Innovation Marketing,80 Coleman Street, London. EC2R 5BJ?Tel: +44 (0)20 7043 8847?E-mail: tom@thecadenceteam.com
eve spencer is happy to announce that we’ll have an installation at 100% design 2013 commissioned by The Printed Wallpaper Company.
And we’re celebrating a new way to bring eve distinction into your home.
]]>eve spencer is happy to announce that we’ll have an installation at 100% design 2013 commissioned by The Printed Wallpaper Company.
And we’re celebrating a new way to bring eve distinction into your home.
By popular demand, we’re making several eve spencer “heroes” available as high quality, limited edition, giclee reproductions. To be in with a chance of catching your very own free hero, join below for exclusive updates.
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Amid the hustle and bustle of Clerkenwell Design Week, in the normally peaceful nave of The Order of St John Church on St John’s Square, a new name for London’s highly regarded design scene is making a very distinctive mark on visitors to the show. With a frank boldness it feels that many modern interiors lack, eve gives a nostalgic nod to the character and expression found in the 1950s home.
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Amid the hustle and bustle of Clerkenwell Design Week, in the normally peaceful nave of The Order of St John Church on St John’s Square, a new name for London’s highly regarded design scene is making a very distinctive mark on visitors to the show. With a frank boldness it feels that many modern interiors lack, eve gives a nostalgic nod to the character and expression found in the 1950s home.