Queer as Folklore
Caroline Coon, Sheltering (detail), oil on canvas, 1991
“Like the Mexican painted wooden Alebrijes from the most southern region of Oaxaca, Pilston’s characters operate between fantasy and reality, play with past and modernity.”
“Glowing clear colours and poignant gaze of the artworks’ characters mix with the gleaming accentuated highlights ...”
“... creatures emerge, seasons change, the imagined materialises and reality dwindles ...”
Between fantasy and reality.
★★★★
WRITTEN BY DAEN PALMA HUSE
Upon entering the gallery space, Jim Pilston’s matt-textured papier-mâché sculptures greet us. The two angelic creatures are rendered in soft pink and red tones with green, purple, blue and ochre colour accents. Their pointed feet seem to dangle more than fly, and an engaging combination between material, shapes, and the motif and its association is formed. Pilston’s sculptured creatures reappear in the upstairs space of the gallery as friendly and reliable companions; Minotaur, Owl Goddess, Herne, Twig Boy and Will Kempe are united in their colourful beauty. Like the Mexican painted wooden Alebrijes from the most southern region of Oaxaca, Pilston’s characters operate between fantasy and reality, play with past and modernity.
Jim Pilston, Angel, mixed media, 2021
Jim Pilston, Angel, mixed media, 2021
Jim Pilston, Angel (detail), mixed media, 2021
The theme of Duovision’s latest show now opened at Gallery 46 in London, is Queer as Folklore. The nine artists featured explore the notion of folklore, it’s subversive depths and worlds of fantasy, alternative religion and British Paganism. The exhibition stretches over two floors and several rooms, filled with artworks that invite to discover, dream and wonder.
Caroline Coon, Pieta (detail), oil on canvas, 1994/2019
Caroline Coon, Sheltering (detail), oil on canvas, 1991
Caroline Coon’s sexualised organic forms that appear in oil, stretch from edge to edge on their canvases. Glowing clear colours and poignant gaze of the artworks’ characters mix with the gleaming accentuated highlights that render the texture of plants and bodies as though dipped in a thin layer of resin or hot wax.
Tracy Watts, Into Eden (detail), oil on canvas, 2020
Directly next to Coon’s work, the moody colour palette of Tracy Watt’s works, amongst them Into Eden, creates a contrast between stark neo-classical building elements and the voluptuous figures that emerge in their fleshy existence. The artist’s apocalyptic skies blend with reoccurring bird motifs, particularly the crane. Watt’s exaggerated perspectives seem to expand the space that the works occupy, and draw their viewer in.
Paul Bommer, Green Man (left), Robin Goodfellow the Puck (right), both tile panels, 2021
Kit Boyd, Winter Green Man, etching and aquatint, 2013
Kit Boyd, The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives, linocut, 2021
From stormy skies and billows of wind we move on to another highlight in the exhibition: a room that is dedicated to both the works of Paul Bommer who presents his playful figures on tiles produced in the manner of Delftware in greens and blues – and Kit Boyd’s intricate colour overlays of his multicoloured Lino cuts, watercolours and etchings. Boyd, much like Bommer, invites us as the viewer to delve deeper and deeper into their works through their relatively small scale, yet brimming with detail.
Boyd’s fine Winter Green Man seems to transform into blunt plastic realities in Green Man and Folaite Head by Ben Edge, who subverts the materiality of plastic mannequin heads and synthetic leaves for his multimedia work.
Ben Edge, Green Man, synthetic leaves on plastic mannequin head, 2021
Ben Edge, Folaite Head, synthetic leaves on plastic mannequin head, 2021
In this exhibition, creatures emerge, seasons change, the imagined materialises and reality dwindles. The artworks not included in this review by David Harrison, Paul Kindersley, James Dearlove complete the show – which you should surely go and see for yourself! An interdisciplinary body of work is united with its multifaceted voices, individual characters, and unique spirituality. When we leave the exhibition, it seems as though the artworks whisper to us still, and will echo in our visual memory.
Gallery view with works by Jim Pilston and Caroline Coon
Queer as Folklore by Gallery 56 and Duovision is on show between Saturday 1st May – Sunday 30th May 2021.
For more information visit www.gallery46.co.uk