PLATFORM FOR EMERGING ARTS #21

PLATFORM FOR EMERGING ARTS #21

13 - 23 February

Private View: 12 February 18.30 - 21.00

Platform #21 is a mixed-media exhibition showcasing the work of an exciting group of home-grown and International talented emerging artists selected by the curatorial team at Leyden Gallery. Held in one of East London’s most vibrant independent art spaces, the Platform for Emerging Arts exhibitions are comprised of emerging artists selected for their innovation and skill; previous participants have gone on to receive both critical acclaim and commercial success. 

For Platform #21 Leyden Gallery is proud to present the art of six exceptional artists. For some it is their inaugural exhibition, for others the first time their work is exhibited in London. 

With the development of each of Leyden Gallery’s Platform shows there is an opportunity for the public to both see and purchase art from emerging artists at a critical early stage of their careers.

Harry Tompkins

Tompkins has been developing his current series of works, Out of Place, Out of Time since 2013, His interest in constructing fictional narratives and displacements overlaps with his exploration of the relation between painting and collage. The paintings begin as collage works, combining fragments of historical images (often broken portraits) with the artist’s own photography. The fragmented figures are suggested rather than explained and appear to the viewer as do ruins to an archaeologist: a starting point of an implied but ultimately unknown narrative. 

Sean Winn 

LA born artist Sean Winn creates both realist and abstracted paintings and installations that are developed from deep connections to both his own interior world and questions that set out from the wider human experience. These powerful works address both his, and others’ inner emotions – questions and issues that would otherwise be keep shrouded, through cultures of shame, confusion and privacy, with issues such as mental health as a concern, Winn’s paintings convey these challenges by way of navigating light and dark through their deft and painterly manner and in doing so the work exposes a profoundly connective potential for the viewer.

Liz Griffiths

Liz Griffith’s work examines place, movement, travel and flow. It is site-responsive and processed, she usually works while travelling, either abroad or close to home on bus journeys around London. Making art in public allows her to explore the tension arising between art practice and introversion. Collaborative elements, such as inviting people to intervene in a piece, or using the motion of a bus in traffic to guide a drawing, are part of her methodology, as are experimenting with discarded or non-traditional materials.

Helen Waldburger 

Inspired by Kate Zambrenos’ idea of Bulimic writing, Waldburger’s work takes in everything and lets it all out again, indiscriminately. In streams of consciousness, thoughts, dreams and aspirations come together to argue no coherent central argument but taken in together form a mountain of testimony. Creating visual instances, which are polyvocal, her works stem from a blend between invented characters and real people that inhabit a narrative based on the artist’s life. 

James Handley

Handley’s practice is concerned with absence, and in particular the presence of absence. His questions revolve around the idea of choosing and how those choices impact on an artwork and yet as he says, there are also choices that do not contribute to the composition, yet may be considered as a constitutive part. It is this binary that underpins Handley’s practice in which both the choice to do and not do form the composition. His current focus is on a series of self-referential paintings in which fabric folds, peaks and divots are highlighted with the use of spray paint. The overall finished piece addresses the implied hierarchy of choice as it is composed with both the paint and the fabric. 

Oliver Martyn

Martyn’s work attempts to shatter the ‘seriousness’ of Art and its history through humorous and absurd interventions, which are underpinned by a distinctive British sensibility. His ideas are usually generated whilst walking and reflecting on the active nature of thinking. His walks allow him to create lists of random words, sentences, thoughts and phrases that are later distilled back in the studio. Sets of ideas are then grouped together through commonality of thought, difference in material or any other manner of ways. Compositions are formed through trial and error, where they constantly evolve, much like the routine of a stand-up comic.