News

11th February - 14th April 2012

Lisa Traxler

Lives of Spaces

The West Gallery

Sat 11 Feb – Sat 14 Apr 2012

Preview: Sat 11 Feb 3 – 4:30pm All Welcome

Artist’s Talk: 25 Feb Starts 2:30pm FREE Just turn up

SIGNED & NUMBERED LIMITED EDITION BOOK OF THE ARTISTS WORK FOR SALE, £15.00   please contact lisa@lisatraxler.com

Lisa Traxler’s art is that of emotional and physical points of reference.

“The interpretation of memory is mine alone – irretrievable moments captured in the gesture of paint, an unravelling of a personal biography.” Lisa Traxler, 2012.

Lives of Spaces is a new body of contemporary work by British artist Lisa Traxler.

Traxler is best known for her now collectable large canvas abstract paintings and over the years her prolific volume of work has grown to include stitched collages incorporating her photography and archival works and recently her wall murals and sculptures of vitreous enamel and steel.

In this major solo exhibition at Quay Arts, Traxler responds to the weight of remembered experience, she creates an environmental autobiography – a sense of self and place, intimately connected. Accessing this form of memory-mapping has enabled the artist to extend her practice in new directions, from large scale enamel and steel sculptures, to ephemeral stitched paper installations alongside her customary textured paintings.

Her current work challenges the concept of self within a space, dissecting the idea through rich colour punctuated by geometric forms, portals into this mind mapping through paint and the sculptural form. Her vibrant abstract paintings of acrylic and graphite on canvas paved the way for most recent works of vitreous enamel on steel.

There is a tension between the nature of the materials used and their transformation into sculpture – paintings in space.

 A limited edition book about Traxler’s work ‘Lives of Spaces’, with essays by art critic and author Peter Davies and artist, writer and lecturer, Jonathan Parsons, will accompany this exhibition. Jonathan Parsons will also be joining Lisa Traxler in a conversation-based talk in the gallery. This is a free talk on Sat 25 Feb starting at 2.30pm in The West Gallery, booking is not required.

“The revelatory nature of her compositions in space embodies Traxler’s journey from the canvas to the factory and echoes the journey that she has embarked upon in her own life. She lives in an environment where anything seen in her surroundings can trigger an imagistic, compositional or painterly response.

For Traxler, a picture is the experienced, felt and intuited world – a connection with her own immediate surroundings and way of life.”

from the essay 'Space, Lived: The Art of Lisa Traxler' by Jonathan Parsons in the book 'Lives of Spaces' 

Lives of Spaces by Lisa Traxler runs from: Sat 11 Feb – Sat 14 Apr, The West Gallery, Quay Arts, Sea Street, Newport Harbour, Isle of Wight, PO30 5BD

For further information and high-res images please contact:

Georgia Newman, Exhibitions Organiser

01983 824160 / g.newman@quayarts.org        

www.quayarts.org

Quay Arts Opening Times: Mon - Sat 9.30am - 4pm,

except Bank Holidays. Free entry to all galleries.