Beast

Catrin Davies, Rob Logan, Jeanine Woollard

26 February – 27 March 2010

Opening Thursday 25 February 6-9pm

Beast is a dialogue between the known, human, and the animal (the Other) world. Its narratives emerge from fantasy and desire as much as reality. These artists allow us the discomfiting but desired world of the incubus, the dangerous encounter, the suspect, and the flawed but enticing hero/ine.

Catrin Davies

Davies presents The Beast of Bont 2009, the latest of her documentary videos based on alleged ‘big cat sightings’, combining the use of original and found footage. Davies interweaves interviews with members of the village who have seen the Beast, studies of the windswept landscape, footage of ‘evidence’ such as mauled sheep, with suggestive inserts from such Freudian classics as Cat People - ‘twice I’ve been followed by something that was not human’.  The ‘Beast’ is the name that locals give to a large cat, believed to inhabit the forest near the small village of Pontrhydfendigaid in West Wales, close to where Davies lives.  The Beast of Bont is a hypnotic and seductive exploration of superstition, untamed desire and fear of the unknown.

Catrin Davies graduated Ist class from her B.A. from Kingston University in June 2009. She was selected for the Welsh Artist if the Year show, and Salon Gallery, London’s choice of the best new graduates.

Rob Logan

Logan's complex, macabre works on paper and canvas borrow from surrealist approaches to mark-making such as frottage, and reveal an interest in phenomenology, perception, and psychoanalysis. Logan builds the image with layers of charcoal, paint and varnish, emphasising some areas to highly detailed intensity while allowing others to recede. This suggests an almost photographic sense of space – the image looming into focus from uncertain gloom. The dark turns of his interwoven structures writhe and floresce as if coming alive, suggestive of many organic sources, though these may be alien. What exactly is being represented is impossible to identify. Analogies to Giger’s beautiful horror are evident, alongside suggestions of tangled vegetation, or internal organs. Although the works are not intended to have a single clear meaning, Logan’s themes are embodiment, abjection, techno-paranoia and apocalypse. For Standpoint, Logan presents several new works, including one site specific wall drawing.

Rob Logan lives and works in London, he graduated MFA St Martins 2008. Group shows include Vienna/ London, WUK Projektraum, Vienna, Austria 2009 Transimulation, The Elephant Rooms, London; Exquisite Decay, Château d'Alba, France 2009; Lust and Luxuria, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 2008.

Jeanine Woollard

Astride a galloping steed, or sprawled beneath a panther’s grip, Woollard’s heroines are fearless in the jaws of danger. She beautifully resolves these epic semi-narratives with the serious low-fi sophistication of her sculptural method into a whole through photographs that leave the edges of the illusion (the studio or imperfect set) consciously visible. Using her body almost as a ready-made, Woollard can ‘insert herself into a pre-existent fantasy, or create fantasy from a chance encounter with an object’ (Melanie Moreau 2009). There is a wealth of opportunities here for the viewer. The images are lush, inventive, exciting. Woollard as the photographs’ subject-protagonist is sexy and dangerous. The kitsch beauty of the blankets provide a ‘guilty pleasures’ aesthetic high, but her considered engagement with art history, both by way of subject matter and material awareness, is inescapable and satisfying.

Jeanine Woollard lives and works in London. Solo shows at Analix Forever, Geneva – 2010, 2007; Vegas Gallery, London 2009; E-Raum Gallery, Cologne, 2008. She graduated from Goldsmiths College in 2007. Group shows include Bloomberg New Contemporaries, London and Liverpool, 2008.

Contact curator Fiona MacDonald: 0207 739 4921 / standpointgallery@btconnect.com

Venue:  Standpoint Gallery, 45 Coronet Street, London N1 6HD

Gallery Open: Wednesday – Saturday, 12-6pm

Tube:  Old Street, Exit 2 (Northern Line – Bank Branch)

Buses:55, 67, 149, 242, 243

Web: www.standpointlondon.co.uk