The Mystery of the Unfinished
MARK WALTER
The space was rammed, but I had an invite, so I thought “I’m going in!”. Once inside the work leapt off the walls and smacked of six contemporary artists who are as one in their work and are joined together by a historical bent. The exhibition curator is local artist Alan Rankle, and the exhibition stems from an idea brought together with Suzie Zamit. Alan explains: “While talking to Suzie about ideas for an exhibition, I mentioned how I’d been intrigued about the similar way these two artists had worked on studies, and how a rough study captures the essence of the artists’ vision. She said ‘we’re talking about the mystery of the unfinished’ and we realised we had a title.”
Alan Rankle was born in Oldham, Lancashire, and studied at Rochdale School of Art and Goldsmiths College in London. Alan’s work is varied and covers printmaking, painting, and photography. His work often starts with the traditional landscape, and he then overpaints it with abstract expressionist gestures. Alan has had a series of exhibitions in Copenhagen, Berlin, Milan and London.
Suzie Zamit studied Fine Art Sculpture at City & Guilds of London Art School. She is Vice President of the Society of Portrait Sculptors and exhibits at their annual face show in London, unique for its showcasing of purely modelled portraits. Zamit’s work mainly concentrates on human and animal forms. Her work is inspired by the terracotta maquettes (small sculptures often used for the original ideas) of the renaissance sculptors.
The other four artists brought together to explore this mystery are Claudia De Grandi, originally from Sao Paulo in Brazil, and her practice takes in many mediums including painting, photography, printmaking, and video installation. Claudia is a classically trained pianist, and she uses music as one of her inspirations. Her series featured in the exhibition Wave and Horizons are based on her observations and photographs of the Pacific Ocean and, closer to home, the dark grey waters of the English Channel near her Hastings studio.
Stephen Newton was born in Grimsby and is acclaimed for his Art and writing. In 1971 he studied art at Leeds University, where he gained a BA, and later a MA in fine art at Nottingham University. Stephen has gone on to exhibit extensively throughout Europe, America, and the UK. The art critic Mel Gooding described Newton’s painting as a “psycho-conceptual project”. His paintings explore: primitive manic states; disassociation; loss; fear; loneliness and supplication – themes containing sinister elements common to us all.
Mathew Radford studied at St Alban’s, and Camberwell School of He has taught in London and New York. Radford’s work is deeply steeped in a London vision; he is concerned with the external life, with the movement of crowds and with the general drama of the human spirit – and for me his works have a figurative L.S. Lowry movement to them.
Charlotte Snook lives in St Leonards but was born in Middlesex and studied at Hornsey College of Art and the Royal College of Art where she received an MA in Painting. She was recently asked to respond to the Permanent Collection at Hastings Museum and drew on the pastoral porcelain figure as well as faces of Christian missionaries gazing out from 20th-century photographs. She was also invited to exhibit at the Hastings Comptempory.
There are some who say their art is never finished, merely abandoned, or they just fail to complete their work. The Mystery of the Unfinished offers the viewer the chance to make up their own mind.
The Exhibition is at the
Rogue Gallery, 65 Norman Rd,
St Leonards and is on until the
26 March.
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