exhibition

Arboreal

Artists Jo Wilmot, Lee Maelzer, Tobi Deeson

05.May.07 - 03.Jun.07
Fri-Sun 12-6

Transition Gallery
Unit 25a Regent Studios 8 Andrews Road
London E8 4QN
020 7254 0045
transition@huntergather.com
www.transitiongallery.co.uk
Tube Bethnal Green; BR Cambridge Heath, Hackney / Bethnal Green

Arboreal: to dwell in or frequent the woods.

Arboreal explores man's interaction with the world and with one another; consumerism, perceived social status, abuse, relationships and apocalyptic times. Humans are absent, their presence embossed through the use of structures, materials and the juxtaposition of the organic and synthetic.

Arboreal is not only concerned with the physicality and strength of the organic form but also how it can represent a deconstruction of the mind, a direct contrast when laid next to the formalities of the manmade world.... a battle can begin.

Tobi Deeson's work plays on the promise of nature, however on closer inspection the flowers are fake, mass produced from cheap bed sheets. Clearly referencing family history and personal relationships but avoiding sentimentality and narcissism, her work instead evokes a cultural memory in a bed sheet, and a reminder that it is the shared personal and practical details of everyday life lived, in which social life, change and personal endurance are found.

Debbie Lawson uses cheap wooden panels, which she treats with the utmost respect. Working with the wood's natural beauty she carves and inlays fabrics and stained wood, giving the pieces a new lease of life. Often using wolves as protagonists, her panels resemble episodes in a picaresque tale exploring the psychological landscape of the domestic interior.

Lee Maelzer's paintings explore contrasting representations of the apocalyptic sublime and the ordinary. They are filled with portent; the paintings take the everyday and describe with a certain amount of tenderness the fine line between that and the end of the world.

Jo Wilmot's practice is concerned with the failure of perceived luxury settings to create paradise. Her dystopian paintings refer to the failure of expectation and explore the idea of fractured pleasure. In such environments architecture is used as a starting point for control of emotions. Packed full of painterly devices, including drips and smears, the works are unsettling and often claustrophobic.