Rosie McGinn’s solo exhibition ‘Biggus Icarus’ follows her extended year-long graduate residency at Lewisham Arthouse. It will take place Friday 2nd – Monday 12th July, 12 – 6pm. Preview Day Saturday 10th July.

The show will feature a large inflatable sculpture of a human free-falling from the stratosphere surrounded by a sequence of drawings and paintings that explore ‘A History of Human Flight’. From a Benedictine Monk fixing wings to his hands and feet and jumping from the top of Malmesbury Abbey to a Serbian flight attendant surviving a plane crash to Icarus flying too close to the sun; this new watercolour series continues McGinn’s research into the human spirit of exploration.

Rosie McGinn’s work explores moments of euphoria often centered around recreational activities such as bingo, clubbing and sports. Her work investigates the ritual element of these practices and reflects upon the highs and lows of these shared experiences. Recent exhibitions include: The Soft Display, Division of Labour, London (2020) Get in There (with OOF Magazine), Tate Modern, Tate Exchange, London (2019); Joyous Dystopia, The Bass², The Bass Museum, Miami (2019); The Boléro, Art Lacuna, London (2019); ULTRA: Art for the Women’s World Cup, J Hammond Projects, London (2019) Our Way[s] Of Life, Austrian Cultural Forum, London (2019) Young Gods, CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London (2019) 3for1, Picnic Gallery, London (2019). Rosie gained an MFA in Fine Art from Wimbledon School of Art in 2018.

Lewisham Arthouse is delighted to welcome our new Graduate Resident for 2018-2019, Sola Olulode.

Sola Olulode’s canvas is stretched with her own version of Adire, an indigo-dyed textile traditionally made by Yoruba womxn in Nigeria using resist-dyeing techniques. She felt the need to have a connection to her Yoruba heritage present in the works. She uses batik, tape and a traditional cassava paste to create intricate and lineal resistance patterns. She plays around with using these rich textiles to elevate the backgrounds and to enhance the figures in the foreground. Using collage to layer gorgeous textiles and textures over figures bringing their saucy outfits and glorious hairstyles to life. Sola’s paintings are a look into the lives of Black womxn, in particular looking at when Black womxn and femmes discover their sense of self. The works document this exploration of sexuality, relationships and individuality through the form of figure painting. Her paintings have been deeply influenced by the culture and community that surrounds her life and I want to project in my paintings something that black womxn and black femmes can relate to and see the complexities of their identities reflected in.

Sola has graduated BA (hons) Fine Art Painting from University of Brighton. She recently exhibited at BBZ BLK BK: Alternative Graduate Show, Orbit UK Arts Graduates Show, Affordable Art Fair Recent Graduates and took part in the VON GOETZ ART Frieze Week Residency.

Kate Fahey – Repetitive Strain

Working across the boundaries of various mediums including moving-image, sound, stills, sculpture, and installation, Fahey’s practice explores our relationship with images through contemporary screen-based perspectives: aerial, satellite and elevated (drone’s eye) views, particularly in the technological hard and soft wares of encounter. Focusing on imagery predominantly appropriated from YouTube, her multidisciplinary fine art practice engages with the surface and materiality of the aerial image employing metafictional and subjective approaches to their habitual modes of spectatorship online.

www.katefahey.co.uk

Sophie Chapman + Kerri Jefferis work exclusively through collaboration, their work explores collective agency and ways to navigate or confront the social structures imposed upon us.

Sophie + Kerri’s work manifests in performance, scored propositions, film and direct acts that are either experienced live or represented via boundary objects: drawings, sculpture, text; that offer poetic records of the events.

Informed by the feminist practice of doing, each project has its own particular set of parameters and infrastructures that seek both a critical and convivial perspective in the context they are located. Common to each work is the desire to bring differing people together, to enact prefigurative forms of resistance and document social time. Each encounter that they stage invites those present to re-orientate, unlearn or embody a different way of being, together.

Image credit: Sophie Chapman + Kerri Jefferis, documentation of Friendsslashcolleagues performed by Chloe Cooper during What Happened Between?

www.kerrijefferis.com/what-happened-between