ARC Salon: The Garden of Eden

guide to the art within the house

The Garden Of Eden ARC Painswick

Colleciton 2022 Arc Painswick presents its inaugural exhibition The Garden of Eden, the exhibition brings together ten contemporary artists working across a range of different mediums and styles, who’s practice has a core interest in nature. Each artist transports the viewer into another world often beyond our own realm. Each work brings in a different way of looking at and experiencing nature, that connects the interiors of Arc Painswick to the beauty of its position in the rolling hills of Cotswolds. From Rene Gonzalz’s dreamlike landscapes to Bea Hassel Mccosh’s Cute Little Thirst Trap painting that brings the colours and textures of undergrowth into the Arc Painswick on a mammoth scale.

The Garden of Eden also celebrates materiality and contemporary ways of making as seen through Victor Seaward’s series of works that use high-tech industrial material and technology to make wall based work. To learn more about each artist’s practice and their work exhibited please see the full exhibition catalogue or contact Arc Curator Anna at Salon@arc.club

Artist Biographies

Bea Hasell Mccosh

Jack Evans

Megan Menzies

Krzysztof Strzelecki

Victor Seaward

Kemi

Olivia Mundy

Rene Gonzalez

Verde Edrev

Kirsty Lackie

Bea Hasell Mccosh

Beatrice’s recent paintings use a dynamic touch and an articulate drafting language to explore the representation of natural forms. Interlinking with her childhood experiences of colour and history surrounded by the sublime wilds of the Lake District, she takes cues from art history as well as finding connections within contemporary pop culture and lived experience. These references support her examination and presentation of small parts of natural forms in monumental size using oils. It is important to her that the focus of energy continually shifts so as never to still a viewers’ eye and though her painting is naturally muted with a palette of tonally close colour the works have a musical intensity and vibrant sense of colour. Drawing and making works on paper is vital to her practise and Beatrice travels widely making multiple small studies, closely observed from life, which she uses to make the large-scale paintings back in her studio. She works as much from memory as from the studies and, in playing with scale, the focus of importance gives way from direct figurative representation to a flattened abstraction with aesthetic choices relating to composition, texture and gestural use of colour taking on the primary importance. Music is a significant part of her work, interlinking with the studies to spark memories, rhythms and emotions.

Beatrice Hasell-McCosh (born 1990, UK) graduated from Leeds University (2014), Leith School of Art (2015) and The Royal Drawing School (2016). She has been included in group shows in London and around the UK and her work is held in private collections in the USA, UK and Europe. Her second solo show will be held in London in 2020.

Jack Evans

Jack Evans is a visual artist, filmmaker and sculptor. His work is interested in ideas surrounding looming existential threats and global catastrophic risk, using the visual language of apocalyptic blockbusters, heavy metal album covers, and the architecture of civilisations that have fallen before us. His work situates itself in an epoch that mirrors the present day, using both contemporary and nostalgic insignia to add an imminence to the foreboding threat by forcing viewers to view this reality through objects they recognise and understand. Evans focuses on true-to-life narratives that haven’t quite filtered through to the broader public consciousness, or if they have, ones where they seemingly completely underestimate a future potential, for better or worse. His use of common building materials, particularly concrete and plaster, add a relational tactility whilst also provoking ancient marbles and petrified remains. Evans employs the techniques of traditional sculptors whilst combining them with the digital technologies of 3D printing and CNC carving to allow him to produce work with details and complexities that would be otherwise impossible to achieve, echoing a future where all labour processes are controlled and initiated by machines

Megan Menzies

Megan Menzies, b. 1995 is a London based artist, currently enrolled on the Painting MA at the Royal College of Art. She is a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2021). Her practice involves drawing, painting and elements of installation to explore stories, conversations and personal experiences. She seeks to capture heavy moments, where time thickens and small details are valued and intensified. Megan often starts with drawing. The drawings are a triangulation between observation, feeling and memory and she uses them to search for an element of the sublime within the often-ordinary subjects that she’s drawn to. Megan translates these drawings onto canvas using oil paint. Sometimes taking fragments from them, areas that interest her for their detail and textural elements, and sometimes keeping them whole. Through presenting both fragment and whole Megan hopes to convey to the viewer a sense of how these moments feel, to encourage sensitivity and close looking and to reveal the underlying awkwardness, sensuality or magic of the everyday.

Megan

Megan Menzies

Krzysztof Strzelecki

Krzysztof Strzelecki was born in 1993 in Świdnica. He was awarded a BA (Hons) from the University of the Arts London (UAL), Camberwell in 2019 and currently alternates between London and Świdnica. He works in a variety of media including ceramics, photography and sitespecific installations. Strzelecki’s influences encompass Christian iconography, ancient mythology and the canon of Western art. He explores the differences (and similarities) between man and the environment, contrasting the wilds of nature with the fragility of the human form. His work often engages with LGBTQ+ issues, especially how different societies relate to issues of acceptance, prejudice and the enduring problem of discrimination. His practice examines the contrasts between the contemporary body and the body in history. Queer culture reacts to different environments and changes with time – he often uses his own body in his photographs, creating a performance and blurring the definitions between being a gay man, an artist and a model responding to the immediate surroundings and prevailing political situation. His ceramics combine a variety of photographic techniques and coloured glazes to achieve the final result. Ceramics is his primary medium today as it combines different aspects of painting, photography and sculpture. It offers a never-ending range of possibilities but requires time and intense focus. So much can go awry in the process of firing and glazing ceramics but he does not view ‘mistakes’ as errors but as a means to tell the unique story of every piece (in accordance with the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi). Our world has been comprehensively ‘shut down’ by the pandemic with bars closed and opportunities for gay cruising forbidden. Gay life has moved into the virtual world and Strzelecki has responded through a series of vases exploring ‘Cruising Fantasies’ - sometimes subverting famous paintings, sometimes imagining public parks crowded with activity and populated by gay men enjoying every imaginable coupling. Many of his vases are based on erotic dreams, porn videos and conversations with random strangers about their sexual fantasies. His work evokes a ‘gay paradise’ which celebrates the joy of life lived to the maximum.

Victor Seaward

Victor Seaward juxtaposes raw, functional materials, such as concrete, with high-tech industrial materials and apparatuses to expose how social and cultural groups are able to enduringly place meaningful stock, through the addition of pattern, objects and symbols, in otherwise mundane ephemera.

Victor (b. Kuala Lumpur) lives and works in London. He graduated with an MA in Painting from Royal College of Art in 2018, having previously completed his BA in History of Art at University of Leeds (2007-2010). Recent exhibitions and projects include: Ancient Deities (Group Exhibition, curated by Rhiannon Rebecca Salisbury) at Arusha Gallery (Edinburgh, 2020), The Potion Room (Group Exhibition, curated by Georgia Stephenson) at Subsidiary Projects (London, 2020), Nebelmeer (Solo Exhibition) at Recent Activity (Birmingham, 2019), Vanitas (Solo Presentation) at Rectory Projects (Lonon, 2019), Isabelline and Other Colours (Solo Exhibition) at Lily Brooke (London, 2019), Listen to the Hum (Group Exhibition) at Alice Black (London, 2019).

Victor Seaward

Kemi Onabule

Kemi Onabule is a painter and printmaker living and working in london. Since graduating from her BA in Fine Art Painting at Wimbledon College Of Art in 2016, she has been included in the Hix Award 2017 and the Ingram Young Artist Award 2017 and recently had her debut Solo Show: ‘Arrival On The Beach’ 2020 at Guts Gallery. In her work she explores the human relationship to nature and its changing role in our lives, our effect on it and the colonial histories that are intertwined with our current ecological predicament.

Kemi Onabule explores the human relationship to nature and its changing role in our lives, our effect on it and the colonial histories that are intertwined with our current ecological predicament.

She is influenced by her Greek, English and Nigerianheritage and their ancient cultures, taking aesthetic and symbolic aspects from each to create a visual language that moves across the various mediums she uses.

Olivia Mundy

Olivia Mundy is a London based artist who recently graduated from BA Painting at Camberwell college of arts. Her paintings aim to transcend the viewer into a state of relaxation and serenity, reflecting scenes and landscapes of a dream like state. In which ambiguity lies around non spaces and object occupying this space. Cusping at the absurd, the paintings balance on a line between fantasy and reality, being a mix between her imagination and the contents of her surroundings. The work plays with the idea of timelessness, where the audience is allowed to escape and enter into a world that is both fantastical and familiar. The warm hazy tones and flatness of the paintings surface created using acrylics add to the softening comfort inviting you to sink right in. The choice of colours continued throughout the artists series of works reinforce the creation of the world in which these paintings exist. Accompanied by a hint of playfulness, aiming to mirror the childlike state of viewing our surroundings with wonder and prosperity. These painted spaces aim to be less physical yet rather emotional, manifested through depth and sensation. The lack of human or non-human existence adds to this comfort, feeling as if you as the viewer are the only being present. Deepening the connection and sense of peace in which she intends to create.

Rene Gonzalez

Rene Gonzalez is a London based artist of Latino background who was born in Montreal Canada and then lived in Costa Rica before moving to the UK where he graduated from a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting at City & Guilds of London Art School in 2015.

Rene paints scenes with dream-like natural landscapes, that often feature human or animal characters that guide us through dark forests, ambiguous backgrounds and bursts of trees and foliage against dramatic, eerie skies. These compositions go from echoes of tropical forests, to woodlands in the Northern hemisphere, but always vibrant with a mystical other-worldly feel, evoking a feeling of the magical in our world.

Having lived in different countries for long periods of time, his works take inspiration from these different environments, but we also see many references to classical painting, folklore from various cultures and popular literature. Seductive visual narratives depict creatures, objects and spaces with an ambiguous feel, as if concealing unclear intentions, like a romantic fairy tale hiding something terrible in the shadows. Foxes have become especially prevalent in the artist’s work since he was deported and had to fight a legal battle on a technical issue with his visa in order to get back to his wife, home and career in London. The fox is an iconic figure in England and yet they roam the streets, unwanted and often misunderstood. But the fox perseveres despite the fact that its natural habitat continually decreases, even in the most urban spaces in London.

Rene has exhibited in solo and group shows in galleries and different art events across Europe and America, including collaborations with the Messums Gallery, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Auc Art, The Auction Collective and The Great Western Studios.

He was awarded first place in the Clyde & Co Blank Canvas Art Prize 2015. In 2019 he produced a mural displayed in the area of Seven Dials as a tribute to the legendary junction and has created unique artworks for entities such House of Vans, Clarks, New Platform Art and the NBA London.

Verde Edrev

Verde Edrev was born in Florence in 1995. She lives and works between London and Italy. Her work is expressed through painting and installation, building un a narrative about human’s universe. She is interested in diving into the intimate moments that tie us together and make us part of the same whole. She looks at the body and the sky as common elements that we all constantly experience.

She gained a BA in History of Art and Art Education at Accademia di Brera in Milan in 2018; and a MA in Fine Arts at City and Guilds of London Art School. Among the most recent shows: Ricordami che ti devo dire una cosa, Salotto Studio, Milan, 2021; Tell Me More, Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome, 2020; So Close So Good, Numeroventi, Florence, 2020; This is the House We Built, private space, London, 2020. She also collaborates in Educational projects: Ti regalo un’idea, Museo di Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, 2020.

Kirsty Lackie

A touch of the surreal, a poetic sharpness, often simply a thought inspired by the awkwardness of everyday encounters. Over the years I’ve found my work moving into those sorts of areas most. A sense of my own guilt hangs over many pieces, and I try and rail against it with humour or temper or something rebellious. I keep coming back to the dark poetry of Selima Hill, Stevie Smith, the soft and loose drawings of Jockum Nordström, the films of Věra Chytilová, but I want to form and reform my interests too. A sense of my womanhood often appears, although I almost never set out to make it about that, as does routine, as does indulgence, decadence too. But the work can only be really understood by the work, it says what it is, in the most succinct way possible.

Kirsty

Kirsty Lackie