Al Benkin and Jamie Kelty Exhibition
Art Raw Gallery
This event has ended.
Art: Raw Gallery presents a two-person show in the front gallery with paintings by Al Benkin and Jamie Kelty. The two female artists both share an interest in assembling and painting on found objects. Through operating in different media, both artists’ work is concerned with using materials as fragments of visual communication.
Al Belkin is interested in the representation of non-normative women in contemporary society. Being born with a missing right forearm, she made up a term “otherly abled” to describe herself. Belkin’s semi-biographical paintings often place “otherly abled” female protagonists in chaotic dreamscapes. She uses different materials as painting supports and employs bottle caps, shells, utensils, metal scarps and other debris to construct urban landscapes. The cynical and yet fantastical situations that she portrays in her work is charged with psychological and erotic tension.
In Jamie Kelty’s Oil Constructs series, found objects are recycled into oil paintings as an uncommon alliance. Figures painted from newspaper clippings, historical photographs, textile, ropes and single-use camera are assembled together to articulate the themes of identity, communication, intimacy and isolation. These props function as visual punctuation marks that question our focus and provide a trail of narrative clues. From Kelty’s process of tearing, scraping and sewing on the canvas, her work imbues a palimpsest-like effect. The rawness of her mark gives the painting a visceral quality and textural depth that addresses urban environment and primitive art.
Media
Schedule
from April 02, 2009 to April 23, 2009