Lisa Ashcroft - Kitchen Gallery Open Winner of Solo Show
3rd September - 1st October 2006 Eye Candy

Ashcroft uses a variety of non-traditional materials including glitter, plastic figures, hanging air fresheners, toys, magnetic letters, and electric lights to create non-objective spellbindingly tactile assemblage paintings. The seductive charm of her work is engaging, using ready-made materials, to create intricate and delicate works. Ashcroft merges urban culture and perception: the way we look at the world, building up an image of the whole from different fragments of travel (looking and reacting to culture) and humour (universal language). The paintings go through a long process of rumination and re-working, embracing, yet challenging, aesthetic traditions and their critical interpretations.

website - www.lisaashcroft.com

Rachael Ellwell - Winner of Norton Priory Prize

Produced on location during a residency at ArToll Kunst Labor, the work is a response to recognitions of urban forms, aesthetic and special concerns of landscape and language and dialect of Bedburg-Hau, Germany.
The work combines the use of typography, which responds to the interests, anxieties, curiosities and confusions experienced whilst making work in a new foreign location, with an experimental approach the application of painting media.
Rachael Elwell is a visual artist from Manchester. Since graduating in 2004 with BA(Hons) Visual Arts, she had gone on to the MA Contemporary Fine Arts course at the University of Salford.

email - artyrach@hotmail.com

Julia Anderson

Since 2002, when I experienced bereavement and personal loss I have struggled with my creativity. Subsequently, life has been creatively barren and painful, and I have felt as if an essential part of me has been dead or missing, with life lacking colour, passion and vibrancy

The colourful inks I have recently produced are a departure from my usual “style” of black and white charcoal drawings, collages, sculptures and installations. This new work reflects my renewed hope and faith and is in response to both events and how I have felt my artistic process has been intrinsically linked to people and events outside me.

email - littlegeranium@hotmail.com

In June 2004 Rowena graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University with a first Class Honours Degree in Embroidery. She is an artist/designer -maker, working to commission and towards exhibitions based at MMU until January 2007 on the Manchester City Pride Setting up Scheme. She uses drawing, dye, print and stitch to respond to nature. Vibrant colour and attention to detail are her hallmark .Her work celebrates the fragility, beauty and regeneration of the natural world .She makes textile pieces inspired by the season .
Recent commissions include flags and banners for the Buddhist Centre in Manchester for the Five Buddha Mandala.

website - www.rowenaardern.com

Richard Ashworth

In relation to my work I have for a long time been attracted to the idea that art does not have to be about an object, but work can in itself be the object, and does not have to be artificial of anything…. The work is what it is.
In relation to these ideas I have chiefly been interested in surfaces, textures, lines, depth and shapes etc.
When sometimes I do form figurative or part figurative or symbolic images it is usually to give purpose to my lines, forms, textures, surfaces, reflected light, etc.
Not that they need any meaning; they can hold their own power and beauty.
I do it because I choose to do it.

email - ashworth_richard_66@hotmail.com

Nicole Bartos

‘Memories’ relate to personal identity, inner state and passive but nostalgic attitude towards time flow and change.
Materials used are paraffin wax, nails (metal), ceramic pieces, paper, pencil drawings, acrylic inks, textile, cut outs from my sketch books and found objects such as crockery, stones and dried flowers.
Dyed paraffin wax and dried plants were used to symbolise time flow and temporality in contrast to materiality. A sense of reality together with the concrete feeling of changes and dispersed emotions were symbolised by solid or bold materials such as nails and ceramics.

website - www.gallery4allarts.com

Chris Bowers

These Ladies in Red are porcelain and I found them in a shop window in Amsterdam.
I found them unusual and the setting seemed perfect to me. The challenge was the colour as the whole thing is almost red and gold. I decided to bring other colours into the painting to compliment the idea. The ‘M’ which is framed on the shelf stands for Madame and the two paintings to brake up the ground…winter and summer. The small checks under the pot and twisting streamers in the background and the carpeted floor are more ‘masquerade’ adding an atmosphere of mystery.

email - chrissy.bowers@ntlworld.com

Jackie Brough

My work focuses on identity and how we cope with our given roles in modern society. Endeavouring to conform and fit in we appear small and insignificant, confined and contained within our space.
Inextricably tied to others, we struggle to develop our own individual identity.
These pieces are constructed in layered textile and mixed media. They are almost three dimensional, and have a tactile, as well as a visual quality. Their appearance changes according to the light and direction from which they are viewed.

website - www.geocities.com/jackiebrough

Maria Garton

Within my work I am interested in developing further a contemporary abstract painting practice within a shifting theoretical and cultural climate. The use of hybrid forms and diverse elements in my work alludes to notions of difference, multiplicity and fragmentation. I use aspects and items of the everyday in my work and incorporate influences from the domestic landscape for example, fashion, advertising, interior décor, items which reveal fragments of encoded histories. My work has an immediate visual impact which invites the viewer to engage in a dialogue with art history and contemporary art practice. My work has been exhibited nationally and has been collected by individuals and public institutions.

website - www.mariagarton.co.uk

Pamela Holstein

The theme that is emerging in my current body of work is a tongue in cheek juxtaposition of animals (both living and extinct!) in surreal situations. The prints featuring dinosaurs are part of a series depicting the obsessions of a consumer society.

email - missbugg@tesco.net

Jane Hughes

Selected Exhibitions 2004: The Sefton Open, Atkinson Art Gallery; Bracket This, Arena Gallery (part of Liverpool Biennial Independents 04); The Wrexham Open, Wrexham Arts Centre; The Wirral National Open, Williamson Art Gallery.

Colour and shape form an important part of my practice. My work usually originates from figurative sketches made on-site (in this case the Liverpool Women’s Hospital). Back in the studio, the images are manipulated and changed quite radically, resulting in a series of flat abstracted forms.

email - janemail.hughes@btopenworld.com

Adela Jones

Jones’s work explores the nature of interaction and communication between people. Loaded with personal metaphors for poignant moments in life, abstract narratives and surreal scenarios reveal a dark humour in her work. Working directly with the public is a continuous source of inspiration.

In 2000 she graduated with a BA in Illustration with Animation at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her practice has evolved to include various artforms from performance and painting to video and installation. She has exhibited in galleries and alternative spaces across the UK, amongst them a Lake District barn and a mechanic’s pit in Liverpool.

email - adela@adela.fsworld.co.uk

Gareth Kemp

The picture shows Pope John Paul II at the window of his 10th floor room during his stay at the Gemelli Hospital just two months before his death. It is a painting based upon a photograph in a newspaper cutting which both intrigued and amused me due to its paradoxical nature. The image showed a powerful religious Icon looking out through the window of a grotty, shabby looking building. The Pope appeared so small and insignificant, yet is blessing a crowd below of ten's of thousands of people.

email - gareth_kemp@hotmail.com

David Lunt

Over the last few years my work has mainly been concerned with the processes and techniques within contemporary painting. My work embraces both my love of the cinematic image and my interest in the use of technology within painting.
I employ a ‘Dualism’ that fractures between ‘Abstraction’ and ‘Realism’, conforming to the notion of ‘Hybrid painting’.
Taking inspiration from a number of different sources and genres, images are collected and then through computer manipulation, deconstructed, to produce compositions with a far more infinite potential. These are then reproduced in a painted format, blurred, layered and twisted to create an essence of the ‘Uncanny’, disturbing, yet beautiful.

email - davelunt@hotmail.com

I used to have objects and inhabit places much like the ones in my drawings. At least I think I used to. It may have been that other people I knew had them, or had access to them. I'd like to think too that they looked just how I've drawn them, but I could never
really see them properly. Drawing is my way of retaining something that I never quite had. It's not necessarily about trying to remember objects or places. Some are probably made up.

email - ewoltrebor@yahoo.co.uk

Treena Markland

“Once you wear a shirt or a pair of shoes for a long time, the destiny of those objects unites with yours. Man shapes what he wears to his own image; it becomes part of him. He abandons part of himself to it.”

Marie-Jose, Rio de Janeiro

My efforts are to understand cloth and the relationships between the owner, and the maker through the sense of touch. These shirts explore the repetitive notion of touch through the anonymous and that of the personal, and question where these unfixed boundaries lie.

email - treena@markland91.wanadoo.co.uk

Rachel Marsden

After graduating in Fine Art (1:1), I have successfully exhibited in locations including the yourART Gallery, Berlin, the Colony Gallery, Birmingham, and the Surface Gallery, Nottingham. In April, I will create a site-specific installation for the East Midlands event Sideshow before commencing a Masters Degree in Art Museum and Gallery Studies.

Untitled (Phone me when you get there) and Untitled (Waiting) are two of eight works, displaying specific phrases selected from a collection of 30,000 typed index cards that attempt to catalogue the content of a life. They are two of the most emotive, representative of my own life and experiences.

website - www.rachelmarsden.co.uk

Nikki Parameter

I have exhibited extensively both in this country and abroad, having gained an M. A. in Fine Art from Manchester Polytechnic in 1984. Over the past few years I have developed a Mixed Media approach to image making, incorporating a diverse range of textures and materials into pieces which are becoming increasingly more three dimensional. I look to the past for inspiration, investigating themes and beliefs which cross time and culture. I feel it is important for us to be aware of the many myths, stories and sagas which have shaped society and I try to bring these back to life in a direct and visual way.

email - nmp@phs.cheshire.sch.uk

Christopher Rainham

These paintings are about the representation of food. Using scale and design I hope to express inherent qualities of what I paint. In my work I use stencilling, projection and automatic drawing as a staring point. I have had an interest in food and cooking since leaving college in the eighties. Survival cooking led to the discovery of the recipe world and my children’s food needs. I have been a contestant on Ready Steady Cook and also a semi-finalist in the Masterchef cookery contest. Search christoher rainham on the net for my rhubarb crumble cake recipe. It’s jolly good.

website - www.christopherrainham.co.uk

Linda Robinson

Contemporary living today appears dictated by the many home and garden magazines on our retail selves and the abundance of home make over programmes on tv. These images appear to be devoid of human contact and remain crisp, clean and idealised. It is my intention to take these images of idealised reality, which are fused with fantasy and a personal obsession to own, and interpret them into something that can be recognised as art. The way we read something can change by employing a different medium. Photography has candour, whereas the medium of print has a spontaneity embedded within its tradition; exploiting happy accidents, the print technique creates depth, individuality and interest beyond the glossy magazine image.

email - LArty@aol.com

Thema K Sykes

“Moon and sun together in the sky:- it changes perspective. Similarly, I skewed elements of this landscape to search for its rhythms and resonance..
Flints gleam from dark earth and from the church as if the building, by geological right, becomes part of the natural history. Despite their dusky plumage, Rooks add colour to this landscape. Their swagger gives them presence, and their bills become pointers that direct my eye through the scene.
Printmaking adds its own alchemy. I like the visual energy generated by tool marks on lino, when crisp edges contrast with flecks and dashes.”

email - thelmasykes@tiscali.co.uk

Sean Williams

The subjects for my paintings lie on the periphery of modern urban life, views that may otherwise pass unnoticed. I am heavily influenced by Post-Impressionism, particularly Seurat and Pissarro, both in terms of potential subjects and technique. My version of pointillism is closer to the pixelation of a TV screen, mechanically building up the painting with a series of tiny dots of exaggerated colour. It is a technique designed to create a lively surface that bears close inspection, and for the image to form, and look photographic, at a certain distance.

email - merion.williams1672@btinternet.com