exhibition

Nordlust

Artists Mia Taylor, Thomas Falstad, Ben Deakin

12.Jul.08 - 10.Aug.08
Open friday - sunday 12-6 when there is a show on and by appointment. Just ring the doorbell!

Crimes Town
Its the first door on the left on Yoakley Road (the metal door).
Postal Address is 110 Church St
London N16 0JX
Gavin - 07941361645 / Ben - 07747033795
info@crimestown.co.uk
www.crimestown.co.uk
Bus 73, 476, 149, 67, Dalston / Stoke Newington

Private View 11th July 6.30-9pm

The three artists in this exhibition explore tensions between desire, ideology and place in paintings of fantastical but contorted worlds, where nature and technology uneasily conjoin. Their work shares an interest in landscape as an idea; that the painted landscape comes to represent more than just a place. Images of landscape are often associated with the desire for otherness and an idealised ‘elsewhere’. In pursuit of this ‘elsewhere’ however, one is no sooner ‘there’, than it becomes a part of oneself, its otherness subsumed and oneself subsumed within it, the ideal endlessly deferred.

Seen through painting, it may be that the enigma of Thule has more to do with the human psyche than any lack of ancient geographical evidence.

Mia Taylor's fictional landscapes allude to a disjointed and ambiguous parallel world where Twin Peaks and Buck Rogers meets Little House on the Prairie. Setting the scene for imagined human narratives, the works explore ideas of time and duration, and each painting’s brief history is traceable through its multiple layers. Taylor graduated from an MA at Chelsea College of Art, London (2005). Her work was included in the Jerwood Contemporary Painters exhibition and prize, London (2007). Other shows include Tipping Point at Purdey Hicks Gallery, London (2008), Hygge, Standpoint Gallery, London (2007) and A Moment In Time, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (2005).

Mythology and idealism collide in Thomas Falstad’s dystopian landscapes. Derived as much from Art historical traditions as they are from popular culture, the depopulated ruins in his paintings are those of a recent past, and an all-too-near future. His “stories from the future” may be fictions but they are an uncomfortable reminder of the power of unbridled technology. Falstad graduated from a BA at Kingston University in 2001. His work was included in Young Invited Artists at the LNM Gallery in Oslo (2007) and Drawn 2B Alive at Hales Gallery, London (2003). Upcoming shows in 2008 include The Drawing Biennial at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo and 40/40 at The Stenersen Museum, Oslo.o.

Ben Deakin’s landscapes are scenes of disjunction, hinterlands in which nature and industry are juxtaposed amid suggestions of suspense. Slippages of scale reveal how associations with landscape and the sublime are inextricably linked to our relationship with the miniature and the gigantic. Deakin graduated from an MA at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London (2006). He was a finalist in the Gilchrist Fisher Award, London (2006). He was recently awarded a residency at KIAC, Canada and exhibited at Gallery Yujiro, London (2007).