The Residency

THE RESIDENCY

26 - 30 September 2017

Private View: 26 September, 6.30 – 8.30 pm

Da Vinci Artist Brushes continued their support of the visual arts practice by introducing a da Vinci Artist Residency Award in 2016. The award offered five artists from five leading art institutions in the United Kingdom the opportunity to experience and respond to Nürnberg’s thriving contemporary art scene, culminating in an exhibition held in the Atelier und Galeriehaus Defet.

Supported by da Vinci Artists Brushes Defet GmbH, Schmincke and curated by Dr Suzi Morris, The Residency, one year on, brings the work of Jonathan Kelly, Suzi Morris, Melody Park, David Schroeter and Sam Stopford together again at Herrick Gallery.

Fact Not Fiction Films ‘The Residency’ feature length documentary, directed by Monika Grassl, documents the five painters process throughout the residency last year in Nürnberg. Fact Not Fiction Films has confirmed the final scenes of their documentary will be filmed at this unique exhibition, as the artists meet again in London.

Dr Suzi Morris (UEL), co-founder of the Residency and former Art Director in Film, completed a practice based professional doctorate in Fine Art at UEL following an MA in Painting from the City & Guilds of London Art School. Morris’ research has taken her into laboratories and instigated collaborations with scientists. These partnerships have had a profound effect on her imagination and the decisions made in painting. Developing a visual language that draws deeply on the experience of suppressing viral Keratitis, her paintings embody her imagination’s relationship with what she experiences in the body. As science harnesses the potential of viruses to theoretically change what it will mean to be human in the future, one of Morris’ objectives is to expand the dialogue between science, medicine and art. Morris lives and works in London.

Jonathan Kelly (Royal Academy) born in Hereford, recently graduated from the Royal Academy Schools. Kelly is attracted to the earliest art, the Paleolithic, as it looks beyond today’s complexities to more universal concerns of life, death and sexuality. He paints totemic idols, deities and venuses, and employs reductive geometries to create flattened mandala-like structures that suggest a devotional function.

Melody Park (Kingston University) is an artist who is quicker with her hands than with her head. She is not beholden to plans or preconceived notions about the finished article. She prefers to let the work unfold of its own accord. There is a spontaneity and serendipity about her work process. Such a process tends to produce more abstract pieces. She has an intrinsic visual and spatial curiosity, and interests in the relationships between colour, shape, objects, and the body. Melody holds a BA in Fine Art from Kingston University, and an MLitt (Drawing pathway), also in Fine Art, from the Glasgow School of Art.

David Schroeter (Royal College of Art) lives and works in London. Schroeter paints examples of architecture as metaphor, rendered with the playful humour and irreverence of comic books. Whether autobiographical or fictional, the imagery of doorways, windows, archways, trees and shower heads repeat across a variety of approaches—submitting themselves to the flat and fresh qualities of acrylic ink on paper, or greasy, thick oil bar layered over brushy marks on stretched linen.

Sam Stopford (Glasgow School of Art) lives and works in Glasgow, after graduating in 2016 from the Glasgow School of Art, is an artist utilizing painting as a means of appropriating and deciphering the flood of images from the mass media. Images of news reportage and popular culture all become concealed within one landscape that through continual layering and overexposure begin to evaporate and distort; an attempt by the artist to explore the vicissitude of information and the mediation of images as a direct response to the shifting narratives of contemporary politics.