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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

Landfill, Lucy Evetts 2019

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

kris@kristianday.co.uk

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