Miranda Donovan

Where contradictions can co-exist and harmony prevails combining juxtapositions like man and nature, order and chaos, beauty and decay, Donovan’s low relief paintings are a space where contradictions can co-exist. They are an analogy for a society where harmony prevails within the politics of division and where the melting pot of nationalities and divergent creeds thrive. To this end they could be seen as idealistic – especially in the context of Brexit, the legacy of Trump, the climate crisis and Britain’s handling of the European refugee crisis, “but you’ve got to believe in the possibility of a better world, otherwise what’s the point?”.

Raised between London, Holland and Gozo, an island off Malta, Donovan “learnt to carry strands of different societies, different cultures, within me.” She read History of Art at the University of Bristol, followed by Fine Art at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts d’Aix-en-Provence and at The City & Guilds of London Art School. She graduated in 2005 with an in-depth knowledge and appreciation for artists ranging from the Dutch landscape artists of the Golden Age to Anselm Kiefer, a deep interest in the sculptural possibilities of painting, and a lasting preoccupation with walls. “Age-old, enduring… walls we walk blindly past every day to the ancient walls of the Lascaux Caves in France. Their layers talk of man’s history, of hopes as well as fears. Walls create havens as well as barriers, whilst their surfaces tell stories through their colours and the marks left both by man and the elements.

”A wall is the genesis of every canvas, the foundation of what will become a landscape or a street scene. Donovan makes each work with materials of the building trade, first layering down a cement-like substance, mixed with polymers. Over this, she applies paint, text, figures, and slogans, constantly sanding back and reapplying coatings, until the colours, marks and residual matter connect with her, and a story is told. A story which at its core, in spite of polarities and differences, speaks of tolerance and an understanding of the “other,” enabling instead emotions of what it is to be and to feel human to rise to the surface.

Thomas is a multi-disciplinary artist based in London exploring sites of the congregation, the narrative of working life and the arcs of family life. Through scripts, sculptures and landscape paintings, Thomas conjures singular silhouettes of darkened habitations and architectural monoliths situated in overcast damning horizons. Collectively Thomas’ body of work gives us a glimpse into a world that is seemingly teetering on the edge of its peril.

As new worlds are forged old ones are forgotten. Now into the third Milenia, our previous days become mythologized and seemingly more archaic with the whitewashing and sandblasting of the backdrop that held host to the previous world's ongoings.

Thomas often focuses heavily on the Industrial Chimney as the central subject of his landscape work. Commanding that its cultural relevance as an architectural monument is as important if not more important than the Steeples of Cathedrals or the Hendges of the Moors. These monuments stand analogous to the standing stones of the bygone ages, marking locations of civilization and collective gathering for collective purposes. However, Thomas' work protests that these ‘spires of modernity’ for a time loomed over all else, monumentalizing the birth of a new deity. A deity to which people would congregate for a new purpose, A deity of economy and capital.

In 2021 I wrote a poem in which the recently shrunken six-fingered narrator, speaks of a mosquito that would be able to rest one leg on each of his fingertips. This mosquito started squatting in my mind and slowly started to burn its way out.

A couple of months later I had to hang a few paintings around the house (where they remain) for storage purposes, including a large mosquito canvas in the living room that began to, in the correct circumstances and with a little bit of encouragement, show me other forms it had the potential to exist in. The flat space in which it resided dissolved and it showed me the depth of its world.

My existing entanglement with colour and texture naturally intensified in order to communicate the resonance and movement and disorientation of this other place I had flirted with, aided by seeking visual reference from the world around me.

The superpositions of colour on a roof stubbled with moss for example. At once an orange clay and also an acidic green. Observed as green in the morning and observed later as orange. And then observed as both and for me that’s when things start to hum. One of the so many things I love about painting is that you can never predict where it will end up. Forme the initial ideas get things flowing but quickly lose themselves in layers of thick paint.

It all becomes more physical. The relationship between the canvas and the painting itself. This intuitive time of technicolour allows also for areas of research to flow into the work. I find over-planning individual paintings restrictive if not futile. The materials (and I am including colour as a material) are not passive. To force a rigid ideal onto them seems to result in conflict. There is a power in the materials that also commands an end result from the painting.

Often after the painting as an image and the painting as an object spend some time getting to know each other, changes are required. The breaking down and rebuilding of a painting may be required. I have works that have been exhibited in multiple forms. Sharing the development.

Exhibiting the process. A painting that is different at each point of observation. Forever a W.I.P.

Benjamin Blanc is a french painter in their final year of Fine Art at Central Saint-Martins. After just over a year of finally exhibiting both in Paris and London, from queer raves and group shows with dear friends, to formal exhibitions in gallery spaces like Southwark Park Galleries and Gallery 46, Benjamin chooses, or maybe cannot help themselves to treat every audience the same way.

The artist believes a formal painting is just a big piece of stretched colour-stained fabric placed on a wall, and plays with the chemical and physical interactions between paint and fabric. They however, think any coloured fabric absorbs the energy, creates a vacuum and gives a place for the eye to land in a room with bare walls. Benjamin wants to make a point of this. In laying the groundworks with opulent fabrics reminiscent of eleganza, they affirm their queer subjectivity. The ruffles trap the painting or protrude from the canvas – depending on how you want to see it. Their paintings beg for attention with their garish ornaments, which stem from thorough examination of taste motivated by WWtheir queerness, and unveil the illusion of formalism.

Benjamin believes oil painting is inherently nostalgic and does not exist without connotation, and plays with the painting-adjacent lexicon. Antique carousel horses, draperies and porcelain flowers waltz in and out their canvas, alongside dusty aubergine, prussian blue and Payne’s grey pigments.

This practice calls for a certain limbo between order and disorder of things, which the artist summons by painting surreal uncanny scenes. Disorder, of things that are not in the right order in time or space, creates vacant gaps left to be explored.

Obsessing over an elimination process led by dissatisfaction, Benjamin’s paintings live in an overly curated decor. Theatre spotlights turn the bed into a stage: the figure laying in the duvets knows you are watching. The cardboard trees of a set design are self-aware, they effectively give the gist of greenery. This paper forest fools the audience without turning them into fools, it contains them in the space of a theatre.

Benjamin wonders if they shouldn’t start obsessing with things that might satisfy them. Lightness ahead!

LIMBO, LIMBO, LIMBO!

LIMBO, Different things to different people , is it a dance, a game, an ancient tradition, its true meaning lost over the millennia…

I was born in Trinidad and Tobago and grew up there during the 60s and 70s. Ina a place, and a time when the LIMBO dance was routinely performed at social events.

Through the eyes of a child LIMBO was vibrant it was strong, a celebration of our tradition, Powerful bodies showcasing exquisite expertise, colourful costumes; it was vibrant.

Trinidad is credited with it origin during the 1950s. However, there are some who make the connection between LIMBO and enslavement because of the narrow space that the kidnapped Afrikans were forced to occupy and the small space under de stick. Afrikans were also forced to dance on deck for exercise.

LIMBO shows were participatory events because the audience were always expected to join in.

Take a turn under the LIMBO stick. Lines formed and the brave , bold supple ones had a go.

Each time our turn came the stick was lowered a notch until it was a few inches off the floor so that only the most limber would be able to keep going.

At this time of year, I feel lost. Trapped on a rock in the North Sea, Near the year’s end, I feel threatened, by the hibernal shift seeking to lift my mood at time struggling to maintain a positive attitude.

At this time of year, I ask myself why am I still here. It's wet, it's damp and cold, another freeze unfolds. For me, This is not a good place to be... Yet another bleak winter, the sunlight's gone AWOL...

At this time of year, I'm left wondering. can handle the adverse weather to come? Sunny days are definitely dun. I do not feel welcomed.

I notice everything around me slowly dying. Much has stopped growing and it’s time for hibernating.

1ST APRIL FROM 6-11PM

Celebrating some of the great movies from the Portobello Film and Art Festival’s 26 years’ history. Featured tonight and you may have seen his stickers around Portobello Road Dominic Wade’s cult classic

DocoBanksy w hich goes a long way to answering the question Who Is Banksy?

THE MUSE GALLERY 269, PORTOBELLO ROAD LONDON W11 1LR

WWW.PORTOBELLOFILMFESTIVAL.COM

Piers, What is in your mind?

Transcribed Audio

Damian:

So Piers, What's on your mind?

Whatever you like, it’s up to you

Piers:

Well, Damian spring is on my mind. We've had obviously, some miserable times and miserable weather. But here we are into March and spring is from here and it seems to be a lot of creative activity going

Damian:

To be true. What in particular,

Piers:

On portable radios show, Strong and good shout at the tabernacle, regular show every fortnight quite nice in the bus is back up and running and we had a fantastic bus in February. That took us as far away as watch up, which was really quite exciting. And I think that's quite as a theme. At the moment. I'm reaching out across London. We've been quite insular. We've been insular for a while, but we've been particularly insular since the pandemic. Bill got stuck in our neighborhood stuck in our homes. And we realize even within London, you know, you go across these trends you've crossed the river to Brixton. There's so much going on. So I think the objective for the next six months is gonna be to bring our neighborhoods back into the collective East London.

Damian:

They were standing here on the block between Cambridge and Lancaster Road, Cambridge gardens and Lancaster road. Do you think this block has changed in the last 20 years? Do you think this is the last bastion of Portobello road?

Piers:

Portobello road changes slowly. I mean, my personal bugbear is the loss of many of the foods to food, by which I mean raw food, stores we've had for so long and the pandemic was not good for a lot of them because a lot of them were relatively elderly. But it's on the other hand, physical space isn't that much different. We're looking at Spanish restaurants. I can remember when that was the Italian cafe. Same people outside

Damian: Cierra Solly. Yeah. So like the south

Piers: turning to follow the sun it changes it stays the same and you've got to work hard to maintain the vibe, the ambience, the values and what is important to it.

Damian:

Couldn't agree more. Thank you