Alice Neave in her South East London studio shot by Ocki
Blue Shop Gallery presents
Alice Neave
'Lying Near Water’
5th - 22nd October 2023
72 Brixton Road, Oval SW9 6BH
ARTIST TALK | Saturday 21st October 11.30am-12.30pm
Alice Neave in conversation with Ocki, Blue Shop Gallery Director
RSVP essential hello@blueshopcottage.com
Gallery opening hours:
Wednesday - Sunday | 11am - 6pm
Alice Neave (b. 1988) was born & educated in the UK. After growing up in rural Dorset she completed a BA in Fine Art from the University of Leeds in 2010 after a Foundation diploma from the Arts Institute in Bournemouth. This will be her 3rd Solo show but first in 5 years, her last one was in 2018 with Public Gallery in London. Having spent some time living & painting in the Poitou Charente region of France, she now works from her studio in South East London on the Thames and completed the Turps Banana correspondence course in 2021.
‘Lying Near Water’ is an exploration of the experience of living in a city whilst needing the immersive respite of natural world encounters. Weaving together the landscapes of South-Eastern France and the mossy forests of Pembrokeshire, Neave embraces ambiguity in her landscapes, being intentional about mark-making and her choice of palette. By cutting up and sewing together fabric in paintings such as ‘Window’ and ‘Honey from the Cat woman’, Neave illustrates the separation as well as the combining of fragmented experience. Cutting up whole paintings allows her to transform them into diptychs, creating a physical barrier that illustrates the disjointed access she has to the experience she seeks. Simultaneously, there is also a process of rebuilding as she stitches pieces together, creating new assemblages and assortments of memories.
Neave interweaves painting with textile, working directly onto unprimed calico. Reworking into the fibre with repetitive washes of raw-pigment, each mark reveals ghosts of old marks, exploring the concept of slowness and temporality. Equating process with outcome, Neave is interested in the idea of gain and loss as these marks appear and disappear, fluctuating. She cites tantric paintings and Persian miniatures as a reference for this method of making.
Neave’s works are interlaced with memory and grief, as she cites her preoccupation with place and limbo. Believing that ‘painting is a language to get to the crux of the matter’, she uses the medium as a way to recreate familiar, uncanny environments that linger with the presence and absence of human life.
She frequently revisits Helen Frankenthalers’ Mountains and Sea (1952) with its washes of colour and raw pigments seeping in. The exhibition title, ‘Lying Near Water’ comes from a painting that has set the tone for her ongoing practice with these processes and materials.
Email hello@blueshopcottage.com to register for the catalogue.