Wall of Light

Richard Bevan and Pernille Leggat Ramfelt, Marcel Dinahet, Zara Matthews, Emer O’Brien

16 April – 15 May 2010

Opening: Thursday 15 April 6-8.30pm

Wall of Light investigates and celebrates the intense and particular beauty of the passing of light across surfaces. Light being fundamental to sight, it is no surprise to suggest that it has a profound effect on each of the four artistic disciplines represented in the show. What is necessarily integral to the means of artistic production becomes active as the subject.

Richard Bevan has attracted attention for his 16mm film installations describing the fleeting physical alterations he makes to a space, often addressing the interaction between architecture and light or colour – its silent language, how it alters our experience. In his degree show for the Slade 2008 he transformed a series of skylight windows into a colour sequence using gel filters. Pernille Leggat Ramfelt’s films, photographs and accompanying texts investigate co-existing levels of reality and the mediated through the recording and reporting on a specific place. Certain events can be repeated, and in her work it is film and the perfomative that is assumed to be a unique combination of circumstances.

For Standpoint they are remaking and expanding upon a piece they collaborated on in 2008. Pointer combines 16mm film and 35mm slide projection. They will film over several days in and around Standpoint, recording certain light events and pointing out objects or effects of interest. Playing on the metaphor of illumination as revelation of knowledge, a text element (how synchronised it will be is questionable) will add a subsequent layer of potential dis/information.

Marcel Dinahet is internationally acclaimed for his videos, filmed while semi-submerged in rivers, seas and pools across the globe. Keeping constant to his motif intensifies the differences between waters - from the enormous swell of the sea and tidal rivers like the Thames, to the gentlest trickling stream. The play of light on water is a favourite artistic motif, but Dinahet adds an entirely new dimension by placing the water surface midfield. For Wall of Light, we present work from the Sources series. Dinahet filmed these in the environs of the Abbey de Bon Repos, a forest landscape irrigated by a vast network of woven water - ponds and streams that coalesce to form the major rivers and canals from Nantes to Brest. The mysteries of this underwater world are revealed to possess an intense and surprising clarity. ‘The ear is stretched to watch murmurs’ (Vauvrecy).

Zara Matthews’s recent paintings are incidental views of a room, where the shifting patterns of light across the space interact with a small selection of objects to produce something poetic and profound. Her new group of paintings, Chambre follow on from the series Stanzina shown at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2009. They began as under- and over-exposed photographs taken on a fleeting stay in a tiny chapel in France. The works continue the theme of the dark room as a metaphor for the camera and make reference to the interplay between the captured photograph and the painted image. Collectively the cluster of paintings form a portrait of this intimate interior and, as if awaking from the darkness of a night’s sleep, the early morning light reveals mirrors, pictures, door frames and unmade blue sheets reminiscent of an Annunciation.

Emer O’Brien’s subject is always as much the surrounding space - the air itself - as the object represented (her ongoing series entitled Space Frames makes overt what is ever present). Her new series of bleached out beach scenes seem to wash us in light. They are scanned from polaroids that she took on a recent visit to southern India, and are presented as light boxes, not constructed traditionally from bulbs and opaque glass, but from balsa wood fruit crates and light-emitting phosphorus crystal paper. Every aspect of the process adds to the sensation of sensitivity and fragility that the pieces emit. Peeking behind the print one sees, faintly illuminated by the electric paper, a world of shadows, knotty imperfections and wood grain: the flip of the ethereal idyll captured on the face.

Artist biographies

Richard Bevan studied at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff and the Slade School of Fine Art. He has exhibited in many group shows here and internationally, including It Wouldn’t Be Worth It Without The Struggle, Howard Gardens Gallery, Cardiff, 2009; Illusions, Gallery Bafa Foto, Geneva, 2009; For the Sake of the Image at Jerwood Space, London, March 2010. He has had solo shows at Room Artspace, London in 2008 and G39 Cardiff in 2009.

Pernille Leggat Ramfelt was born in Oslo 1976, and lives/works in London. She graduated from the Slade in 2008. Recent  exhibitions include: (made up and let down), Lost Horse Gallery, Sequences - Real time Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland, The neutrality of this section is disputed, Remap KM 2, Athens, Greece, Alyans; W17 Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway, thedaybeforethedayafter, London, UK; 2008 Illumination, Manchester UK, Taenu, Cardiff, Wales; 2007 trace, Woburn Research Centre, London; Stick, Stamp, Fly, Gasworks, London.

Marcel Dinahet was born 1943 in Plouigneau, Finistère and lives/works in Rennes, France. He has exhibited extensively with solo exhibitions, site specific projects and residencies in many countries. Solo projects include 1=3, La Criée Centre d'Art Contemporain, Rennes, France, 2009. Arslonga Galerie, Paris, and Le tube 01, Le Quai, Angers, France in 2008; Travelling Exhibition (video exhibition in a Truck) following on from a residency in Abbadia, French/Spanish Borders; and Madder 139 Gallery, London, both in 2007. He is represented in the UK by Domobaal Gallery where he will have a solo show in November.

Zara Matthews is a graduate from the Royal College of Art. Shelives and works in East London, exhibiting both nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include The Painting Edition at The Whitechapel Gallery and she be showing new print editions at the London Original Print Fair : Royal Academy, and The Eagle Gallery in April. Recent group shows include ‘Sensory Material’ at Bonhams 2006, ‘Paare’ at Galerie Pia-Anna Borner Luzerne 2007, ‘Autobiography’ and ‘Small is Beautiful:Love’ both at Flowers East 2008. She is represented by the Eagle Gallery in London and Grenzenlos Contempart in Hamburg

Emer O’Brien (b. 1974, Dublin, IR) lives and works in London. Most recently O’Brien was awarded The School of Arts Commission for City University and the work ‘Immiscibility’ 2009 is now part of the Universities permanent collection. She studied at Goldsmiths College 2002 – 03 and since then her work has been included in numerous group shows including The Wapping Project 2009, The Royal Academy 2008 and The Whitechapel Gallery 2004. Her first solo exhibition ‘Journeys into a Bright World’ was held in 2008 at Ferreira Projects.  In 2005 her work was shown at PRAGUE BIENNALE 2 in the Directors selection for the Narondni Galerie V Praze.