Of Mirrors, Mirages and Reflections

Shirin Abedinirad’s stunning mirror installations defy viewers’ perception of reality, while also offering unexpected perspectives of the places into which they have been set.

Much could be said about mirrors and the different roles they have played in different cultures throughout the times.  From stealing souls, to showing the manifestation of one’s mind and soul, to doors leading to different worlds, they offer an endless field of speculation and challenge us to question our very essence and our inevitable frailty and transience.

Tales of Books and Art

Ekaterina Panikanova’s fantastic three-dimensional artworks on books blur the lines between painting, installation and collage, while taking viewers down memory lane on a journey into childhood.

Let us go down memory lane and back to our childhood, to times of innocence and joy, to tales filled with fantastic characters and magic stories. Let us take our old storybooks and revisit them, feel their unmistakable smell, fall again under their irresistible spell.

Ekaterina Panikanova, born in St. Petersburg in 1975 and presently based in Rome, invites us to do just that with her art. She creates highly original, densely layered paintings across large spreads of old books, school magazines, posters from different times and other such materials which she finds in flea markets.

Venetian Fantasy

Dale Chihuly’s stunning glass art creations conjure the fascination and wonder of colour, transparency and shape to offer viewers pieces that seem to have come out of magic hands.

Think of Venice and we immediately dream of the intense, beguiling and romantic beauty of this city, of the intimate connection of town and sea, of its worldwide famous and luxurious Carnival, of the truly fabulous glasswork produced in the nearby island of Murano. Everything about Venice invites us into a universe of beauty, romance, glamour, charm and art.

Fluidity

Penny Hardy’s awesome sculptures, conveying a strong sense of life and vitality, address the concept of fluidity so characteristic of present-day society.

‘Fluidity’, or ‘liquidity’, are fitting metaphors to understand the nature of our present times, of modernity, when nothing is stable, nothing can be taken for granted, nothing actually lasts long. This has been magnificently explained by Zygmunt Bauman, the famous sociologist, in his well-known work “Liquid Modernity”. The notions of solidity, stability and sturdiness so appreciated in times before ours have been replaced by the concepts of fluidity, liquidity, the capacity to quickly change and adapt to new and different conditions or environments.

Circles and Spirals

Sally Smith’s environmental art features delicate, ethereal sculptures illustrating the simple and fragile beauty of the natural world.

“Round, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning…” goes the song. This has set us thinking about the prevailing use of circles and spirals in art works included in what has been agreed to call Land Art, as is the case – among others – of Andy Goldsworthy, already featured in our blog. And, yet, we are suddenly struck by the fact that we find it quite natural. After all, Land Art deals with Nature and a mere glance around us reveals how far circles and spirals are basic elements in Nature.

Mystery and Drama

World-renowned Philip Jackson’s awe-inspiring sculptures never fail to move viewers with their aura of mystery, their sense of drama and their emphasis on form.

This time, for a change, we are featuring a well-known sculptor, whose work can be seen in many public places throughout London, as well as other towns. However, the aesthetics of his sculptures is so mesmerising and compelling that we have not resisted including him in our body of work, most commonly dedicated to less famous artists.

DyslexArt

Bronia Sawyer’s talent and creativity have broken down the barrier of her dyslexia to offer viewers book art in which texture, strength and versatility combine to produce sheer Beauty.

“I am dyslexic but I enjoy working with text. I like the idea of working with words in an abstract way, as sometimes that is how written language feels for me. When I write, my words are often mixed up or missing: folded away in part of my brain I can’t quite get to.” This is how U.K.-based artist Bronia Sawyer explains the reason of her passion for using books as her medium to express herself within the art world.