exhibition

As for reality, we like it exotic

Hannah Hewetson

17.Jan.08 - 17.Feb.08
Wed-Sun 12-6 or by appt; first Thursday 12-9

Private View, 17.Jan.08, 6.30 - 8.30pm
Artist Talk, 07.Feb.08, 7pm

Contemporary Art Projects
20 Rivington St
London EC2A 3DU
020 7739 1743
info@caprojects.com
www.commentart.com/gallery/Contemporary_Art_Projects
Tube Old Street, Liverpool Street, Shoreditch / Hoxton

For her solo exhibition the artist has made a series of new paintings and ceramics. Stage sets, nightclub interiors and figures are taken as the starting point for her images. The artist moves from abstractive to geometrical forms where vertical and horizontal strokes using only three pigments are set against a black or white background. While some of her works melt buildings and skyscrapers in architectural utopian spaces, others reference neon strip lighting, textile design and jukeboxes.

Hannah Hewetson draws inspiration from the elegance and practical modernity of Art Deco, in particular the arcs and curves, of ‘streamlining’: an aspect of the American Art Moderne. Abstract painters such as Sonia Delaunay and the semi-figurative paintings of Ferdinand Leger are also referenced through the merging of subject and setting. Using a simplified and stylised geometric system, Hannah presents a mysterious and feminine view, combining remembered images and imagination.

The title is taken from a review of Revenue Negre, 1925 Paris. Starring Josephine Baker and portraying dancers in African costume with bare skin and feathers, the show juxtaposed the tribal with the modern, dramatising the exotic for the pleasure of its audience. Similarly, Hewetson’s works are part exotic, primitive; part elegant beauty and restraint.

Born in Oxford 1977, Hannah Hewetson lives and works in London, She graduated from Glasgow School of Art Masters of Fine Art course in 2003 after completing a BA in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. She has exhibited internationally in Paris, Mexico City and Montreal.

Catalogues As for reality, we like it exotic