The World of Glass welcomes the solo exhibition by Nancy Collantine this September. Nancy brings a fresh display of modern art with fantastic processes. The window metaphor is insightful and is especially relevant in recent times.
Whether we are inside looking out, or outside looking in, Nancy Collantine’s paintings and installations, encased in margins, edges and frames, offer a patchwork of possibilities that spill out over the edges of wobbly grids.
Collantine’s windows at first offer up pale skies and atmospheric conditions, moving into the landscape of the paintings itself, each held in its own horizon and grid.
“My process of building up and dismantling references and recollections is like having a conversation with the work. I’m attempting to reach a point where something might feel familiar, but not easy to grasp, leaving it open for a different view.”
The window is an established theme in modernism, Collantine finds inspiration in American artists such as Lois Dodd and Richard Diebenkorn, who in turn find inspiration from Henri Matisse. The window offers a compositional formula that Collantine has adopted in her own way, the lines falter, disappear and repeat with stripes of coloured paint, allowing the viewer to look through.
“I wondered why I was so attached to the edges, not only did they provide a frame and a tension to work to and against, I began to understand why they are there – for they frame our gaze, which is what we focus on and give life to. We could be looking through a screen or a window, into memory or towards the horizon, whatever it is, there is always another reality, the present, happening in the margins.”
Opening event on Saturday 11th September 12-4pm.
Exhibition open from 11th September until 5th November. Free entry.