The Urban Sublime / an exhibition of paintings by the Urban Contemporaries and guests.
Weekend opening hours: 12 to 6pm Saturday and Sunday 9th and 10th July
Private View: Tuesday 5th July 6-9pm and Thursday 14th July 6-9pm
Urban Contemporaries is a group of figurative painters aiming to explore the city experience. We create ambitious responses to the subject, responding with drawing as a starting point, painting as the common medium and individual encounters with urbanised life as the dominant motif. We conceive themed shows that reflect upon the urban condition.
While painting has never gone away, contemporary painting is often presented alongside other media such as 3D, film, installation. One motivation for the artists of the Urban Contemporaries is to create exhibitions made up purely of paintings and so to offer an opportunity to weigh the qualities and virtues of the medium. It presents the ways contemporary painters continue to develop their language, finding links to the past and applying them to living, contemporary subject matter.
It is the energy and tension of modern life in a city that drives the work of the Urban Contemporaries. In examining particular places and scenes of the city environment, the group offers a meditation on the way we are now. The metropolis acts as a metaphor for humanity, reflecting achievement, fun and hope, but also a darkness and uncertainty.
The artists all start by working from observation. And for some this is the principal activity, creating works that meticulously record from life so that every part of the painting’s surface is active and contributing to the whole. Others edit and refine the raw record to create elusive work with internal narrative, introducing another kind of imagination to the viewer. The elements they use derive from their environment but the spaces created in the paintings are closer to allegory or myth, invention is more strongly a feature of their paintings. Work from these artists gives a symbolic, sometimes apocalyptic, dimension to the group.
The artists who make up Urban Contemporaries and the invited guest artists offer dynamic, thought provoking contemplations of the city environment, and the figurative nature of the works make them accessible to all audiences.
Urban Contemporaries website: https://urbancontemporaries.weebly.com/
Contact: Ferha Farooqui ferhafarooqui39@googlemail.com https://ferhafarooqui.weebly.com
Frank Creber frankcreber@gmail.com http://www.frankcreber.space