Nine paintings and sculptures by contemporary artists are brought together in this exhibition to create a colourful, eclectic and texturally diverse display evoking the visual richness and variety of a bazaar. Typically bustling, overcrowded and sensory locations where myriad wares are presented for view, bazaars can offer unexpected discoveries and visual delights. Here too, in the quieter spaces of the gallery, are objects of wonder, beauty and strangeness, whose contrasting textures, shapes and colours amplify and complement one another. The works generate a lively conversation between geometry and organicism, rough and smooth surfaces, soft and hard materials, structured form and experiments with anti-form.
Colour acts as a spur to the imagination here. As modernist artist Paul Klee said, ‘Colour is the place where our brain and the Universe meet’. We see vivid pigments applied on canvas or cardboard, the readymade colours of fabrics like dyed hessian, tuille and wool, and coloured materials like adhesive vinyl and metal used to create highly individual and sometimes enigmatic works. Within our notional bazaar, a wide range of cultural and art historical references are invoked, including modernist abstraction and post-minimalism, educational toys and craft-activity, costumes for a theatre of the absurd, Rorschach images, Arabic music and decorative traditions. For all their differences, what the artists share is a spirit of experimentation with the mediums and processes of painting and sculpture.
