Dísir
Anousha Payne - Lucy Evetts - Aisha Christison
Curated by Jeanette Gunnarson and Kristian Day
She inserted a tiny
Telescope into the spine
To see
If there were any backbone at all
Or if it were
Simply
An amphibian creature with no skeletal structure
Washed up
Or flushed down
From some forgotten swash buckling time
((As she retorts
This story
In all its glory
Pondering under the shadiest light
She weighs up or down
The Pros and cons of living Wedged between steel and bone))
“Blood used to flow through these cities
Sickly sweet -
Ruddy and red”
She said
“Where time was evanescent and would proceed with little command
Far from the cries of crows or crowds
Where the desolate and deserted
Bargained with Penthos
To remove all mourning
And grant a foreseeable life.
I did suppose”
Said she
((And quickly became derailed by insanity and said))
“I do propose if we could live
A Spineless
Utilitarian
Life
-A
Puddle,
No longer
Gorging on
The girdles of desire-
Then we
Could subsist
Without
Pain or fear
And be content
To find ourselves
Rising with the tide
And riding the modern
Wave of Utopia
Sent from my iPhone
Dísir, an exhibition featuring the work of artists Aisha Christison, Anousha Payne and Lucy Evetts explores the correlation of digital and spiritual ‘other worlds’, new and old realities be they algorithmic or folkloric. Free association and creativity is pitted against and merged with automated reasoning. How much expression is left to chance? Fittingly the Dísir of our title were the female deities of Norse mythology known to control fate, be it benevolent or hostile.
Aisha Christison’s paintings are saccharine dreamlike scenes that pay homage to formative years spent between the virtual and physical world. Operating outside of conventional dimensional planes, Christison employs imagery using interwoven fragments of her personal history through a visual language made possible by digital technology yet also shows its origins in European post-expressionism. With a strong sense of nostalgia, her paintings offer the viewer an intimate view to her interior world.
Aisha Christison is a British artist working in Brussels. She graduated from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2012 and completed the Florence Trust residency program in 2016.
Anousha Payne’s work explores the human pursuit of spirituality in object form, as a form of cultural expression that is distinct from religious symbolism. Through the process of psychic automatism and free-association, she is interested in the possibility of imbuing spirituality into an object, and in the material qualities of religious or spiritual objects. Payne is currently researching the anthropological notion of new animism, and is exploring how this can express spirituality through instinctive drawings and watercolour paintings, these are then translated into sculptures. This process seeks to build an aesthetic dialogue and personal visual language as a meditative interaction. A recurring theme is highlighting the incongruity between ancient materiality and modern technology.
Anousha Payne (b. 1991 in Southampton) lives and works in London and graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in 2014.
Lucy Evetts makes paintings and installations using a variety of different approaches that include paint, silk screen and print. Using text and imagery Evetts creates fragmented voices and visual languages that continuously collide juggling private and public experiences. Predominantly sourcing her imagery from social media, led by her own online algorithm, and attempts to question ideas of intimacy and modes of sharing to create paradoxical narratives.
Lucy Evetts (b. 1989) graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2018. She lives and works in London.
Dísir
A collaboration between Kristian Day and TM Lighting.
Private View July 10th
July 11th - August 30th 2019
TM Lighting Gallery, 7 Cubitt St, London WC1X 0LN