Bradninch Place, Gandy Street, Exeter, EX4 3LS | 01392 667080 | exeterphoenix.org.uk

eco12.indd 2-3 29/08/2012 20:20

Aly

Hel

yer

Exeter Contemporary Open is an annual exhibition open to submissions from artists from across the UK and beyond. The exhibition is not thematic but aims to be a platform for the MOST�TALENTED�EMERGING�ARTISTS�AND�TO�REmECT�CURRENT�THEMES�and concerns in contemporary art practice.

The 2012 selection panel consists of artist S Mark Gubb, independent curator Paula Orrell and Phoenix Gallery curator Matt Burrows.

The selected artists are eligible to receive a £1000 Overall Award, two £500 Additional Awards and a £200 Audience Choice Award, as voted for by the visiting public and announced at the end of the exhibition.

Generous support for the exhibition has been provided by our main sponsor Haines Watts Chartered Accountants, along with additional support from St Austell Brewery, Exeter Natural Health Clinic and The Big Issue magazine.

enhc.org

13 Sept – 1 Nov

Chloe Brooks

Anita Delaney

Nisha Duggal

Aly Helyer

Brendan Lancaster

Olivier Larivière

Ruth Piper

Siobhan Raw

David Theobald

Chloe Brooks

chloe-brooks.co.uk

Aly

Hel

yer

enhc.org

13 Sept – 1 Nov

Chloe Brooks

Anita Delaney

Nisha Duggal

Aly Helyer

Brendan Lancaster

Olivier Larivière

Ruth Piper

Siobhan Raw

David Theobald

Chloe Brooks

����������������������������"ROOKS��SITE SPECIlC�SCULPTURAL�CONSTRUCTIONS�RESPOND�to the architecture of the exhibition space, subverting or changing the way the space is viewed and used. Her intention is to create a dialogue between the work and its surroundings, and for the viewer to see and experience the space in new or unaccustomed ways.

For this exhibition she constructs an architectural facsimile of a doorway from another part of the building and inserts an incongruous column within the gallery space. Both highlight the layered structure of the gallery space, its past amendments and architectural idiosyncrasies, exposing the tensions between contemporary and historic uses of the building.

chloe-brooks.co.uk

Aly

Hel

yer

Anita Delaney�

����������������������������Working mainly in moving image, Irish artist Anita

Delaney creates a world of and for the outsider.

Her work traces a sensibility balanced between

failure, the humorous and the abject and seeks to

determine a strategy for how to live as a weakling.

She is interested in the aesthetics of minor affects

(the experience of feelings or emotion) such as the

pathetic and anxious and how they may be particularly

relevant to late modernity. Furthermore, as an outsider

in an advanced capitalist society she wonders what

disruption embracing the weak, the malformed and

the malfunctioning can have as a form of opposition.

anitadelaney.net

Nisha Duggal

����������������������������Nisha Duggal works in response to structures

of power and control. She processes everyday

experience to explore expressions of freedom and

creativity lived within it. Here, she presents The

Invisibles��A�VIDEO�WORK�THAT�EMPLOYS�AND�RE AFlRMS�the folk/Socialist anthem The Internationale for a

contemporary audience. This animated self-portrait,

in which the artist sings to camera, is about the

contrasts between opposing ideas. It highlights

the slippage between various themes including the

solitary versus the many, and fragile as opposed

to slick, as well as the digital in contrast to the

handmade.

nishaduggal.co.uk

eco12.indd 6-7 30/08/2012 14:08

Aly

Hel

yer

Anita Delaney�

����������������������������Working mainly in moving image, Irish artist Anita

Delaney creates a world of and for the outsider.

Her work traces a sensibility balanced between

failure, the humorous and the abject and seeks to

determine a strategy for how to live as a weakling.

She is interested in the aesthetics of minor affects

(the experience of feelings or emotion) such as the

pathetic and anxious and how they may be particularly

relevant to late modernity. Furthermore, as an outsider

in an advanced capitalist society she wonders what

disruption embracing the weak, the malformed and

the malfunctioning can have as a form of opposition.

anitadelaney.net

Nisha Duggal

����������������������������Nisha Duggal works in response to structures

of power and control. She processes everyday

experience to explore expressions of freedom and

creativity lived within it. Here, she presents The

Invisibles��A�VIDEO�WORK�THAT�EMPLOYS�AND�RE AFlRMS�the folk/Socialist anthem The Internationale for a

contemporary audience. This animated self-portrait,

in which the artist sings to camera, is about the

contrasts between opposing ideas. It highlights

the slippage between various themes including the

solitary versus the many, and fragile as opposed

to slick, as well as the digital in contrast to the

handmade.

nishaduggal.co.uk

eco12.indd 6-7 30/08/2012 14:08

Brendan Lancaster�

����������������������������Lancaster’s paintings explore the transition between abstraction and representation, utilising the expansion and compression of form, the diversion of a line and the spatial impressions of colour. Through an overtly physical use of paint, he allows unexpected imagery to emerge with the potential to suggest a place or situation.

Selectively borrowing just a few narrow, very painterly references from other artists, as a concious part OF�AN�ONGOING�ARTISTIC�TRADITION��THE�lNAL�STATE�OF�HIS�paintings grows from multiple decisions, detours, dead ends, failures, errors and changes of heart. From all this he aims to uncover an image that seems to arrive as if from nowhere.

brendanlancaster.com

Aly Helyer�

����������������������������Aly Helyer seeks to capture fleeting impressions of the monsters and gods that inhabit the unconscious, built up from our ancestral and shared cultural experiences. Her painting process is a mixture of conscious and unconscious decisions, chance happenings and stream of conscious episodes, her own will only partly imposed on the canvas.She is interested in mythological figures, universal archetypes, alchemy, monsters, amorphous hybrid creatures, deities, bogey men, religion, mysticism, child gods, the iconic, the shadow, tricksters, magic, voodoo... primordial images that surface by night in our dreams.

The world they inhabit is the other side of the hall of mirrors, I take chances with them, ruin them, then desperately try to claw their precious faces back from the mud.

alyhelyer.com

eco12.indd 8-9 30/08/2012 14:08

Brendan Lancaster�

����������������������������Lancaster’s paintings explore the transition between abstraction and representation, utilising the expansion and compression of form, the diversion of a line and the spatial impressions of colour. Through an overtly physical use of paint, he allows unexpected imagery to emerge with the potential to suggest a place or situation.

Selectively borrowing just a few narrow, very painterly references from other artists, as a concious part OF�AN�ONGOING�ARTISTIC�TRADITION��THE�lNAL�STATE�OF�HIS�paintings grows from multiple decisions, detours, dead ends, failures, errors and changes of heart. From all this he aims to uncover an image that seems to arrive as if from nowhere.

brendanlancaster.com

Aly Helyer�

����������������������������Aly Helyer seeks to capture fleeting impressions of the monsters and gods that inhabit the unconscious, built up from our ancestral and shared cultural experiences. Her painting process is a mixture of conscious and unconscious decisions, chance happenings and stream of conscious episodes, her own will only partly imposed on the canvas.She is interested in mythological figures, universal archetypes, alchemy, monsters, amorphous hybrid creatures, deities, bogey men, religion, mysticism, child gods, the iconic, the shadow, tricksters, magic, voodoo... primordial images that surface by night in our dreams.

The world they inhabit is the other side of the hall of mirrors, I take chances with them, ruin them, then desperately try to claw their precious faces back from the mud.

alyhelyer.com

eco12.indd 8-9 30/08/2012 14:08

Olivier Larivière

����������������������������French artist Olivier Larivière aims to capture something about the human condition, our search for identity and meaning in life. Often depicting ANONYMOUS�lGURES�@WANDERING��IN�NON DESCRIPT�urban landscapes his paintings are based on images trawled and collaged from the internet. He reworks these images repeatedly, painting until the image is on the verge of collapse into abstraction, breaking the immediate intelligibility of reality to reveal something intangible.

(IS�MOST�RECENT�SERIES�OF�WORK�REmECTS�ON�MANKIND�S�fascination with risk and the need for domination over dangerous wild animals; penning, domesticating and reducing them to impotent spectacle.

olivierlariviere.com

Ruth Piper

����������������������������Ruth Piper describes her work as existential diagrams THAT�ARE�INmUENCED�BY�EMOTIONAL�NARRATIVE�AND�psychological undercurrents. Sometimes referencing architectural forms or road maps and using opaque block colours, she borrows the format of the diagram utilising a kind of cognitive cartography to build up her images. In this exhibition her large, colourful COLLAGES�USE�SIMPLIlED�ABSTRACT�OBJECTS�TO�CONSTRUCT�A�narrative in the plan view. Experience, sensation, time and memory have been gradually compressed into the format of a colour-coded map that can function as portrait, landscape, or simple diagram suggestive of the complexity of human relationships. She is interested in the reciprocal energy exchange that occurs between the viewer and the artwork.

ruthpiper.co.uk

eco12.indd 10-11 30/08/2012 14:08

Olivier Larivière

����������������������������French artist Olivier Larivière aims to capture something about the human condition, our search for identity and meaning in life. Often depicting ANONYMOUS�lGURES�@WANDERING��IN�NON DESCRIPT�urban landscapes his paintings are based on images trawled and collaged from the internet. He reworks these images repeatedly, painting until the image is on the verge of collapse into abstraction, breaking the immediate intelligibility of reality to reveal something intangible.

(IS�MOST�RECENT�SERIES�OF�WORK�REmECTS�ON�MANKIND�S�fascination with risk and the need for domination over dangerous wild animals; penning, domesticating and reducing them to impotent spectacle.

olivierlariviere.com

Ruth Piper

����������������������������Ruth Piper describes her work as existential diagrams THAT�ARE�INmUENCED�BY�EMOTIONAL�NARRATIVE�AND�psychological undercurrents. Sometimes referencing architectural forms or road maps and using opaque block colours, she borrows the format of the diagram utilising a kind of cognitive cartography to build up her images. In this exhibition her large, colourful COLLAGES�USE�SIMPLIlED�ABSTRACT�OBJECTS�TO�CONSTRUCT�A�narrative in the plan view. Experience, sensation, time and memory have been gradually compressed into the format of a colour-coded map that can function as portrait, landscape, or simple diagram suggestive of the complexity of human relationships. She is interested in the reciprocal energy exchange that occurs between the viewer and the artwork.

ruthpiper.co.uk

eco12.indd 10-11 30/08/2012 14:08

Siobhan Raw

����������������������������0HOTOGRAPHER��3IOBHAN�2AW�IS�INTERESTED�IN�@SPIRIT�of place’, focusing her practice on spaces of

SIGNIlCANCE�FOR�HERSELF�AND�OTHERS�AROUND�HER��!IMING�to capture the abstract notion of home, her images

act as small, distant memories, remade and rethought

through the lens of a camera.

Here, she presents works from a series called

Spirit�THAT�IMAGINES�PORTRAITS�FROM�A�lCTIONAL�53�college yearbook that capture the tension between

1970’s American suburbia and an imminent loss of

ADOLESCENCE��(ER�PORTRAITS�HOVER�BETWEEN�ARTIlCE�and reality, a hint of teenage awkwardness switching

BETWEEN�HER�CONTEMPORARY�SITTERS�AND�THE�lCTIONAL�characters that they represent, embalmed eternally in

the emulsion of the negative.

siobhanraw.co.uk

David Theobald

����������������������������David Theobald is a video artist working in HD digital

animation to create familiar yet alien environments

that often hinge on a wry observational humour,

continuously looping, with no discernible beginning

or end. In Walking Holiday in Grindelwald he

presents a computer simulation not of an actual trip

to Switzerland, but of the paraphernalia that one

might acquire on such a trip, along with the grindingly

slow process of printing out the physical holiday

snaps. Theobald explores the relationships between

memory and the digitisation of photography; between

THE�VIRTUAL�AND�THE�REAL�IN�THE�AGE�OF�THE�@STAYCATION���contrasting the promise of technological development

with the realities that it often offers instead.

davidtheobald.com

eco12.indd 12-13 30/08/2012 14:08

Siobhan Raw

����������������������������0HOTOGRAPHER��3IOBHAN�2AW�IS�INTERESTED�IN�@SPIRIT�of place’, focusing her practice on spaces of

SIGNIlCANCE�FOR�HERSELF�AND�OTHERS�AROUND�HER��!IMING�to capture the abstract notion of home, her images

act as small, distant memories, remade and rethought

through the lens of a camera.

Here, she presents works from a series called

Spirit�THAT�IMAGINES�PORTRAITS�FROM�A�lCTIONAL�53�college yearbook that capture the tension between

1970’s American suburbia and an imminent loss of

ADOLESCENCE��(ER�PORTRAITS�HOVER�BETWEEN�ARTIlCE�and reality, a hint of teenage awkwardness switching

BETWEEN�HER�CONTEMPORARY�SITTERS�AND�THE�lCTIONAL�characters that they represent, embalmed eternally in

the emulsion of the negative.

siobhanraw.co.uk

David Theobald

����������������������������David Theobald is a video artist working in HD digital

animation to create familiar yet alien environments

that often hinge on a wry observational humour,

continuously looping, with no discernible beginning

or end. In Walking Holiday in Grindelwald he

presents a computer simulation not of an actual trip

to Switzerland, but of the paraphernalia that one

might acquire on such a trip, along with the grindingly

slow process of printing out the physical holiday

snaps. Theobald explores the relationships between

memory and the digitisation of photography; between

THE�VIRTUAL�AND�THE�REAL�IN�THE�AGE�OF�THE�@STAYCATION���contrasting the promise of technological development

with the realities that it often offers instead.

davidtheobald.com

eco12.indd 12-13 30/08/2012 14:08

Bradninch Place, Gandy Street, Exeter, EX4 3LS | 01392 667080 | exeterphoenix.org.uk

eco12.indd 2-3 29/08/2012 20:20