The St Leonards Four exhibition @ Kave gallery
Overview by Brian Coen, Arts correspondent for the Bohemia Village Voice.
This is not Art for the furrow brow crowd. This is Art for the mischievous lovers of life.
Freed from normality, these four local intergalactic creative deviants, drag works of irreverent satire and beauty into the white cube of Kave Gallery, Kings Road, St Leonards-on-Sea. An inspiring, diverse combination of Illustration, Print, Collage, Painting and small Sculptural pieces makes this a riotous feast of Art. Check the gallery for extra curricular events being staged during the show.
A must see for all curious live humans.
Scott Garrett
Mister Scott Garrett is the hairiest of the Artists in this Exhibition. His growth and development has born fruits in many fields. The power of his Art lies in the mastery of few words combined with succinct flourishes of the enpenned fingers to articulate wry human truths. His exposure of the fragile beauty in all is life affirming. Comfortingly reassuring for the insecure and a blast of humour for the rotund. Scott Garrett is an Illustrator of the highest standing. A mighty tall man, he has work published in national newspapers and a multitude of very important capitalist enterprises. Recently the coiffeurs’ paradise boy has directed his forces through to the third dimension. Along side his illuminatory drawings comes a wave of small sculptural artefacts. Combined and distorted consumer items of our current cultural morass reformed into new forms of tactile wonder. This is one beast that shall never be contained.
Sarah Evans
Sarah Evans commands a natural beauty that invigorates all who are lucky enough to witness her work and her eyes. With an understated passionate talent, her paintings and drawings combine deep understanding with seeming effortless joy. Having a lifelong love of creative exploration and a strong involvement in the education profession, Sarah Evans’ work and the work of those she has aided and inspired, clearly informs all to the importance of proactive creative endeavour in the community. She creates characters with gentle depth that draw you into their family. Her work uses line and colour so deftly that you are in danger of missing its technical delicacy as your consciousness swims in her magical world. If you are fortunate enough to own one of her Artworks, you know you have a treasure all yours forever.
Thad Skews
Heavily moustachioed Artist, Thad Skews, uses craft-oriented techniques to explore the fracture lines of Human Behaviour. His work oscillates between themes of love and the absurd. There are three parts to his Exhibited work here. His most recent work is the “Light Body” series. Using his “wandering eye” style clay heads, six caged colourless humanoid creatures wait for something. Vaguely embryonic and elderly, the Artist insists that the work is about making use of “…my all too short life”. To the viewer, the Art Brut and childlike constructions hover around a sense of angered “I could do that!” and “Why?” whilst being essentially mirrors. Other works by Thad Skews in this exhibition include lino-carved animal prints of a playful style and old encyclopaedias butchered with their image content reassembled into gently chaotic theatre scenes. His work is diverse and adventurous, though he claims to be the victim of distracted and inconsistent creative impulses.
Sarah Janes
Sarah Janes is a perpetual volcano of free-spirited ideas. The smouldering forms of her work hit the surface of the world with a friendly slap. From her Quality Portraits oddball celebrity caricature series, shown in Brighton and Bexhill, to the diverse multi-media pieces exhibited at the legendary Aardvark Gallery and Tea Rooms, along with her voracious desire to put on concerts of incredible underground world class music acts in our little town… Sarah Janes is a major force for the Arts locally.
This exhibition holds her new “Alphapet” series. The theme proved one of the most successful of the Aardvark projects. The reason for this success is their playful surreal simplicity. Bright coloured blocks of wood brought to life with choice collage material from old animal encyclopaedias, re-formed into absurd new zoological realities. These swashbuckling bizarre beings made of confused truths hint at works by Spike Milligan and Dr. Zeuss.
Many thanks to Jay Toole at the Kave Gallery, for all his enthusiasm, creativity and support for inspirational Arts in our small community.
Oh, so looking forward! So looking forward...
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