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Sweat Lodge explores chance, instinct, repetitious acts and a primal urge to communicate something, but without quite knowing what to say. In equating the act of studio practice with that of purification or cleansing, the hard graft of art-making takes on an almost ritualistic nature where everything is reduced to a base level. By rummaging around physically and mentally for elements to bring together, each artist chooses to let outside forces and materials dictate the final outcome of work.
Test Space is programmed by studio holders based at Spike Island and offers artists a chance to exhibit new works and test ideas. Artists from within the Spike Island community and beyond are included.
Zanne Andrea’s assemblages gravitate towards industrial, institutional, domestic materials and objects; things often encountered in daily life. By constantly researching, reading and looking at images, Andrea continuously arranges and edits her work to conjure up the hidden or what is underneath or unknown. Interested in the different aspects of power, she plays with connections , associations and the cultural detritus of history swept up and spat out for a new world order.
Recent Exhibitions: Smoke and Mirrors, Edwardian Toilets, Bristol (2014); Beneath a stereoscopic moon, Spacecamp MicroGallery, Indianapolis, USA (2013); Beaten Black Blue Red Green and Gold, Clifton Street, Cardiff (2012). Zanne is currently artist in residence at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea and was selected for the Catlin Art Guide 2014.
Test Space is programmed by studio holders based at Spike Island and offers artists a chance to exhibit new works and test ideas. Artists from within the Spike Island community and beyond are included.
The work of Martyn Cross identifies territories where drugged-up loners meander and social misfits encounter last-man-on-earth scenarios. By vandalizing ready-made images of questionable utopian vision, Cross takes pleasure in exploring hazy situations and leaving an idea hanging. On the surface everything seems normal, yet further investigation reveals a sense of the uncanny.
Recent Exhibitions: Barbican Artworks Open, Barbican Arts Trust Group, London (2014); Take Me To The Other Side, Pallas Projects, Dublin (2013); Edgelands, Angelika Studios, High Wycombe (2013); Temporary Residence (with Aid & Abet), Kettles Yard, Cambridge (2013). Martyn was recently a prizewinner at the Barbican Artworks Open and in 2012 was one of Modern Painters100 Artists to Watch.
Brendan Lancaster uses paint in a physical way to suggest places or situations – something we feel maybe we’ve seen before, but haven’t. Something unreal and abstract. In seeking to uncover an image from nowhere, Lancaster never sets out to create anything in particular – he just gets lost in the woods and uses smoke signals to attract attention.
Recent Exhibitions: Form and Function, Piccadilly Place, Manchester (2013); Open Country, Motorcade/Flashparade, Bristol (2013); A night and day and another night, Bucca Gallery, Newlyn (2013); John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Gallery, Liverpool (2012). Brendan will be showing in Writhe and Jerk at Transition Gallery, London in 2015.
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