2nd March 2023 - 1st April 2023
Preview: Thursday 2nd March 17:30 onwards, all welcome!
The Unsteady Now brings together the work of ten Cornwall based artists, known collectively as ‘Dreysa’. The group have a wide range of practices, working across a range of media to explore diverse themes from pertinently contemporary perspectives. Whether untangling aspects of politics, environment, science and religion, or articulating concepts of place and the self, each artist operates with an awareness that in these times the ground on which we stand is inherently unstable: ideas must be challenged, histories unravelled and normality redefined.
The exhibition extends out from the Penwith Gallery, with a four-day installation at St Nicholas Chapel, on the Island, and a presentation of print work on show at Porthmeor studios from 2nd to 18th March, which will then tour to Ocean Studios in Plymouth.
Dreysa was formed as the result of a nine-month period of conversation, networking and creative exploration facilitated by Field Notes and made possible by Cultivator as part of their programme of Graduate Support, supported by the European Regional Development Fund, HM Government, Arts Council England and Cornwall Council.
Alice Robinson-Carter is a painter, printmaker, walker and explorer based in Cornwall. She is passionate about capturing the essence of place, in particular those places she adventures into close to home, and on her travels elsewhere. From foraging in the undergrowth, to watching birds take flight and plummet back to land, Alice uses a mixed media approach to capture both the details and expansiveness of these unique landscapes. Her primary materials are pastels, acrylic paint, charcoal and pencil: through playing with the interrelationship of these processes, Alice mirrors the interconnectedness of these places in a way that holds and celebrates their essence.
Alice’s studio is based at Ocean Studios, Royal William Yard in Plymouth and she graduated from BA Illustration at the University of Plymouth in 2020.
Anna Harris is an artist working across sculpture and drawing, currently exploring Cornish materiality and man-made geology through experimental ceramics. She is interested in deep time, ‘thingness’, the Anthropocene, intertidal zones, ‘vibrant matter’, and particularly how humans understand themselves in relation to the nonhuman world. She graduated from BA Fine Art at Falmouth University in 2022.
Anna Logan is an artist and illustrator who teaches illustration at Falmouth University alongside her mixed media practice. She is interested in reparative ways of working and uses physical processes and materials to explore invisible connections between the human and non-human world. Her work begins with a sensory connection to place and a process of collecting natural materials from the landscape, particularly spaces that have a tension between human extraction and natural elements. She graduated from MA Illustration: Authorial Practice at Falmouth University in 2021.
Carys Wilson is a visual artist, whose practice shifts between drawing, painting, craft, writing and walking. She works using egg tempera, charcoal and oil on traditional gesso grounds. Her visual practice is fuelled by her daily rituals of walking and running, and observing her specifically female world both internally and externally. Carys recently graduated from MA Fine Art at Aberystwyth University in 2022.
Emma Butcher is an artist and illustrator who works on book and editorial projects, alongside her personal practice of painting. She is interested in visual storytelling, atmosphere, psychology and place. Mysterious and evocative, much of her work is set during the nocturnal hours and occupies liminal spaces such as shore and coastlines, windows and caves. Her work is poetic and ambiguous, a play with what is seen and unseen. She graduated from MA Illustration: Authorial Practice at Falmouth University in 2018.
Izzy Eastick is an artist working with drawings, gouache paintings, and collections of objects. Common themes and interests within their work include trace fossils, deep time, entanglements and connections, ecocentrism, liminality, collecting-categorising-displaying, and natural history. Their work often takes the form of organic materials, such as bone and feather, presented in conversation with their intricate nature based paintings. Izzy graduated from BA Fine Art at Falmouth University in 2022.
Liv Gravil is a weird-thing maker and hobbyist storyteller working in drawing, painting and print. They are currently interested in holes in the ground and things falling from the sky. They graduated from BA Fine Art at Falmouth University in 2020.
Mark Pearson is a Scottish photographer who researches and experiments with historical and modern photochemistry techniques in his visual art practice. His work involves documenting contemporary issues with a focus on trespass and man made physical boundaries. Mark graduated with a BA Media Arts from the University of Plymouth in 2018.
Marta Feyles is a visual artist and tattooer from Italy who creates mixed media installations. Her work develops from an obsession with entanglements, grovigli in her native language. The backbone of Feyles’ practice is family rituals and traditions, and her own oscillating separation from these. She creates votive, skin-like artifacts subjected to subliminal traces of proximity and distance. She recently graduated from BA Drawing at Falmouth University.
Ruairí Valentine engages with the intersections of queerness, the body, gender, intimacy, and faith. They are interested in transformation, of the self and of society, in imagining queerer, expansive futures. Queer love is central to their practice, which often draws on their own experiences of radical intimacy to challenge the isolation we accept as normal in current society. They graduated from Falmouth University with a BA in Fine Art in 2021.
