On the Edge at ROLLO Contemporary Art

On the Edge at ROLLO Contemporary Art

22 April, 2009
by: Tom Jeffreys

Fertile creative spaces can be tough to locate these days. The ability to be wholly original has perhaps always been illusory, but today at least we're aware of it. For the Modernists, this was cause for lament, for Post-Modernists a cause for celebration. Today, it is neither. Newness springs from the cracks in the paving-stones of art history. Whether it is weeds or roses that grow here is not for us to judge.

This, I think, informs the latest exhibition at Fitzrovia contemporary art space ROLLO Contemporary Art. On the Edge professes to examine the space 'between abstraction and representation, fantasy and reality' and features work by five contemporary artists: Nadine Feinson, Natalie Gale, Rhea O'Neill, Michelle Souter and Jane Ward.

Rhea O'Neill is represented by two works, one of which – large oil painting Moonlight Shadow – is like a scene from a children's fantasy storybook or fairytale – all creepy trees and mysterious glow. Michelle Souter does monoprint drawings that combine careful compositional structure with an apparently random, scribbled aesthetic: scrawled lyrics emerge from semi-representational body parts.

In the corner of the gallery's basement are a series of works by Natalie Gale. Using a range of unusual materials – gesso, antlers, deer fur, silicon, paper, gold leaf and human hair – Gale produces intimate works. Under the nacreous sheen and Victorian mannerisms lies an ancient pagan sexuality that threatens to break free at any stage.


Jane Ward, 'In the Bay Shining', mixed media photography, 96x150cm courtesy of the artist and ROLLO Contemporary Art

In his History of Sexuality, Foucault noted how repression often results in a proliferation of exactly that which is supposed to be repressed. He cites the diversity of sexual preferences evident in the supposedly ultra-frigid world of the Victorians. If this is what Gale is exploring, then in some ways the work of Jane Ward does the opposite.

Ward takes hundreds of photographs of all manner of things – flowers, coastal landscapes, model villages – which are then layered and collaged together using Photoshop. By removing sections from certain layers, Ward exposes parts of the layers below. The resulting images are digitally printed onto large canvasses before Ward applies a range of chemicals to further strip back the levels of image. The resulting works are dense with information – In the Bay Shining, for example, possesses a real frothy vibrancy.  And it is almost too much. By trying to focus on one section or layer, another one comes to the fore: like and unlike those Magic Eye images, you squint and look but no single clear image emerges. It's akin to the hazy ways of memory's faulty focus.


Nadine Feinson, 'Ravennakamp', Oil on Board, 151x204cm, 2004 courtesy of the artist and ROLLO Contemporary Art

The opposing tropes of emergence and suppression come together in the paintings of Nadine Feinson. I've seen several of her works before, and I also did an email interview with Nadine in August last year, so it was great to finally meet her here. She talked to me about something known as a 'stochastic process'. In some senses this is a paradox – stochastic means random, but the very nature of a process means that it is geared towards production. But this is a paradox that in some ways lies at the heart of her paintings.

What I like about Jane and Nadine's work is that the viewing process is very much an active one. Their works continuously provoke a search for a single cohesive reality, but it is a search that is always ultimately thwarted. When I last saw Nadine's Penelope at Standpoint, I described it as 'ever about to reveal some Eden beyond'. Now I realise that, by chance, Eden was the right word: real or fictional depending on the belief system of the viewer. The more Eden is represented (re-written, re-imagined), the more ungraspable and abstract it becomes. But, roses and weeds together as one, it is still, even now, the most fertile of gardens.

On the Edge is at ROLLO Gallery until 29.05.09.

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Tom Jeffreys