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‘You’re Reading Into It’ brings together bodies of work by seven emerging LGBTQ+ artists, curated by artist Oliver Doe. The work focuses on queer readings of Minimalist art and portrayals of LGBTQ+ experience through a minimal abstract lens. Seeking to challenge the machismo often associated with Minimalist art and reclaim a queerness in that visual language, ‘You’re Reading Into It’ highlights the importance of queer and radical feminist issues in the development of contemporary art.
Rachel Ara’s work makes direct references to High Minimalism’s sexism and the movement’s ignorance of women artists such as Ana Mendieta, as well as gendered pricing structures in art and the tragedy of the HIV/AIDS crisis to which she lost several friends. Charlotte Cullen seeks to reinsert the individual into Minimalist formalism’s abstract removal of the artist’s hand by employing a feminist sense of craft. This contrasts the ‘masculine’ industrial fibreglass insulation and aluminium used in the sculptures in order to question binaries of gender and sex. Garth Gratrix also utilises materials often associated with Minimalism – household paints, concrete, and metal – but turns this machismo on its head by playfully examining their ‘queer’ properties through language, innuendo and slang.
Oliver Doe’s paintings question queer visibility in visual culture, employing opaque gloss paint over translucent, skin-like nylon grounds. Abstracting figures into confused, amorphous and sometimes invisible bodily forms, Doe critiques formalist hard-edge painting through an inquisitive queer lens. These are well complemented by Singaporean artist Daniel Chong’s intimate mirrored sculptures, Safe Spaces, which critique his country’s criminalisation of homosexuality. These laser-cut works present the abstracted spaces between embracing figures, removing the bodies and their associations from sight, whilst reflecting the figure of the viewer within.
Tessa Hawkes’s practice plays with object-hood, materiality and narratives, working across a diverse range of media to explore closeness, balance and unalike objects. Her choices of ‘things’ are purposefully colourful and fun; working from collections of images and objects informed by industrial spaces and queer culture, playing with her own queerness and aesthetic views while working through formal methods. Liam Fallon’s sculptural works plays with similar visual codes, deeply invested in the materials’ properties and their relationships with queer coding and cultures.
Rachel Ara was born in 1965 in Jersey and lives in London. Her recent exhibitions include ‘Controlled Realties’, Anise Gallery, London and ‘V&A: Digital Futures’, Hackney House, London. She was winner of the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2016, and was recently awarded a 2017-18 fellowship from Near Now, Broadway’s studio for arts, design and innovation in Nottingham.
Daniel Chong was born in 1995 and lives in Singapore. Chong has exhibited internationally in Spain, South Korea, Portugal and Singapore. He has recently been awarded a residency at Kunstnarhuset Messen, Alvik, Norway.
Charlotte Cullen was born in 1989 in Nottingham and lives in Leeds. Her recent exhibitions include ‘Into the Woods’, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, Leeds, ‘Where’s Your Coat You’re Going To Get Cold’, Caustic Coastal, Manchester, and ‘Please, Be Gentle’, Assembly House, Leeds. She was the recipient of a doctoral studentship with the Centre for Sculptural Thinking at the University of Huddersfield and was selected for UK Young Artist 2016.
Oliver Doe was born in 1994 in London and is an artist, writer and curator living in Newcastle upon Tyne. His recent exhibitions include ‘In Plain Sight’, 35 Chapel Walk, Sheffield, ‘Moving on Out, Moving on Up’, NewBridge Project, Newcastle upon Tyne, and ‘Distant Bodies’, System, Newcastle upon Tyne. He was a founding member of Queer Artist Collective Newcastle upon Tyne.
Liam Fallon was born in 1995 in Stoke on Trent and lives in Manchester. His recent exhibitions include ‘COLACE’, Grosvenor Building, Manchester, and ‘Exchange Rates’, Bushwick, New York. He recently graduated from Manchester School of Art and has undertaken a residency with The White Pube, art criticism website.
Garth Gratrix was born in 1984 and lives in Blackpool. His recent exhibitions include ‘Campground’, A Small View, Liverpool, ‘Nein inches away’, Thirteen a, Norwich, ‘Queerdom’, Hospitalfield, Arbroath, and ‘Nein inches apart’, ICW, Blackpool. He is the director of Abingdon Studios and curator at ICW, Blackpool.
Tessa Hawkes was born in 1993 in Leicester and lives in Leeds. Her recent exhibitions include ‘Exaggerated Ideals’, LS6 Café, Leeds, ‘Free Range’, Old Truman Brewery, London, and ‘p-nuts’, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, Leeds. She recently graduated from Leeds College of Art and has completed a residency at Dumfries House with the Royal Drawing School.
For further information or images please contact:
Christopher Yeats, Programme Manager
tel: 0191 261 8281, email: info@vane.org.uk
Vane is open Wednesday-Saturday, 12-5pm, admission free.
Vane, First Floor, Commercial Union House, 39 Pilgrim Street, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 6QE.
T +44(0) 191 261 8281
www.vane.org.uk
Vane was founded in 1997 in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England. Vane opened a permanent gallery space in Newcastle city centre in 2005. In October 2011 Vane launched a gallery space on the first floor of Commercial Union House, 39 Pilgrim Street in the centre of Newcastle. Vane represents the work of a number of artists, both from across the UK and internationally, as well as showing the work of invited artists in collaboration with other galleries. The gallery directors are Paul Stone and Christopher Yeats. Vane is supported by Arts Council England.