Dominic Allan ‘You Look Good’
4 December 2009 - 9 January 2010
Dominic Allan was born in Luton in 1977. He graduated from Chelsea College of Art in 1999, specializing in sculpture. Since then, he has continued making artwork about an obsession with coming from Luton. This has provoked the use of materials as diverse as: customised dodgem cars, gold-leafed lollypop sticks, homemade seaside superhero outfits and children covered in joggle eyes.
‘You Look Good’ brings together 16 new hand-sewn sweet bags by artist Dominic Allan
Each bag is a direct response to a situation Allan has found himself in either personally or professionally, with someone or other. And by himself. The texts spit out from Allan’s everyday. Itself, unremarkable, like the rest of society. Under Allan’s crowded duvet of works for ‘You Look Good’ lie memories of terrace yodelling at Luton Town Football Club, the inconsistencies of being self-employed and the Candyfloss Mountains climbed (in his head) in trying to make it as an artist. Seared off by strangers, John Cooper Clarke, Anthony Burgess, Campag Velocet’s Pete Voss, Berkoff, dead playwright Sarah Kane, the artist’s own brother, away fans and past transport managers.
Anger indeed manifested as art.
The bags reference Allan’s continual re-visiting as an adult of crap seaside towns frequented as a child. Sunshine towns no better than Luton, place of the artists birth. Sweet bag as the throwaway, hand stitched words as his everyday.
Dominic Allan's Web page
Siobhan Bradshaw
3 March 2010 - 14 April 2010
Siobhan Bradshaw has used her time working at London’s Jazz Café to take this series of stunning pictures of musicians and performers.
Her love of film noir and jazz record sleeves has influenced her work, and here she has produced images that capture the coolness of those late night intimate performances.
Siobhan Bradshaw's Web page
Helen Beard
22 April 2010 - 11 June 2010
Helen Beard is an artist born in Birmingham in 1971. After graduating from Bournemouth College of Art in 1992 where she studied design, Helen worked in advertising and film as an Art Director and Wardrobe Stylist.
Now concentrating solely on art producing paintings, collage, tapestry and installations, with various themes including sex, relationships, body image, childhood, madness, ecstasy and hysteria.
Following her show in 2010 at We Are Cuts in Soho, her work was included in ’The Term Reality‘, a group show at Paul Stolper Gallery in London.
Sadie Lee
15 June 2010 - 17 July 2010
Sadie Lee's imaginative paintings were first bought to the wider public attention when her double portrait 'Erect' was selected for exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 1992.
As well as showing in the BP Award at the National Portrait Gallery, Sadie has had several one-woman shows nationally and abroad. These include 'Venus Envy' at Manchester City Art Gallery and 'Dying Art' - Ladies of the Burlesque' at the National Portrait Gallery. This was a series of portraits of former striptease stars from the 1940’s to the 1970’s, now elderly and retired, posing in revealing costumes from their stripping past.
Her most recent project ‘And then He was a She’ consists of painted portraits of Holly Woodlawn, regarded as the world’s most famous drag queen. Holly Woodlawn was one of Andy Warhol’s Superstar drag queens and is best known as Holly, the first character in Lou Reed’s infamous hit, Walk on the Wild Side. ‘And then He was a She’ has been exhibited in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow and will travel to Berlin in October 2010.
www.sadielee.f9.co.uk
www.sadielee.com
Thomas Rhys Grady
15 June 2010 - 17 July 2010
THOMAS RHYS GRADY has been a photographer and film-maker in London for the past 5 years. He has been photographing live music and Burlesque artists. His work has appeared on websites, books and magazines across the boroughs of the universe. Under the pseudonym “Gorodisch the Footstamper” he has documented the party class of London in all states of distress to impress. This is his first exhibition.