7th June – 20th July 2013 SCREAM 27 – 28 Eastcastle Street London W1W 8DH www.screamlondon.com
Scream are to present two-man collective STATIC. This exhibition sees the multidisciplinary skills of London-based artists Tom Jackson and Craig Evans whose backgrounds in Graphic Communications and Fine Art fuse to create a unique body of work using screenprinting techniques and layered glass.
The title of the exhibition is taken from a journal written by a member of the Society of Psychical Research in 1886 – Phantasms of the Living –which provided a study of paranormal activity and apparitions. This sets the tone for the works displayed in this exhibition – where evanescent figures haunt the gallery walls. STATIC present their signature style of layering glass, but they have incorporated texture and materiality into the work using wood slats, ash, dried flowers and reclaimed wallpaper.
STATIC continue to push the boundaries of portraiture and image making, previously explored in their earlier bodies of work Moments of Clarity and the Holi Series. The graphic and patterned imagery is created through a combination of screen printing and mixed media techniques.
The figures oscillate between the layers of glass and the detritus of flowers, wood, ash and printed paper. Although seductively beautiful and rich with colour and texture, there is an underlying tension between beauty and decay, the real and the imagined, the figurative and the abstract. Inspired by the ideas of dreams, hallucinations and the ephemeral and by combining these found materials, STATIC have created works that evoke notions of memory, the transcience of time and which allude to the phrase ?memento mori?.
The artists comment,
“we want to encourage people to look beyond the surface and connect with the images, where each piece carries an echo of the one before”.
This succession of figures combined with the regeneration of these organic elements could also be interpreted as a subliminal nod to the cyclical nature of life and death. Jackson and Evans have collaborated since 2006 and have shown internationally including solo shows in Japan, Milan and Singapore and in group shows in India and the UK.
