Back to Back is a series of duo exhibitions taking place from January - March 2021 seeking to create unpredictable dialogues between artists.
This edition of Back to Back brings together the work of painter, Sophie Vallance Cantor, and ceramic artist Lily German, co-curated by Cassandra Bowes and Anna Woodward.
Lily German is a London based ceramic artist whose work investigates the rawness of materiality through her ceramic vessels. Lily’s uses of mark making and coloured pigments creates other worldly textures that transcend our traditional understanding of ceramic surfaces. Sophie Vallance Cantor is a Glasgow based painter whose work is driven by the relationship of reality and fantasy, creating paintings that sit between the realms of the two worlds. Sophie takes inspiration from the world around her and often features her own cats as a recurring motif within her painterly language.
When bringing these two artists together the curators considered the concept of fantasy and reality and how materiality and familiarity of imagery pulls the artists practices together. The setting of this exhibiton is a derelict apartment in Kensington. The emptiness and age of the building further pushes the works to occupy their own space, removing the contextualisation of a traditional gallery setting and leading us to consider our own perceptions of reality.
-
Sophie Vallance Cantor
Sophie Vallance's practice as a painter is an intense examination of moving through life, a conversation with herself. Encounters from her everyday are re-imagined on her large square canvases, half reality, half fantasy. Her imagery draws heavily on the use of animals, self portraiture, food and scenes based on real events, with the themes within her practice ranging from humourous to darkly sad. She is currently based in Glasgow but has lived in both Berlin and London, allowing her practice to naturally evolve over time, not tied to a particular geographical place but rather tied to life experiences wherever they occur. Her own voice exists between feminist practices, cathartic art making, processes of confession, folklore and storytelling, and ultimately her work is an expression of self reflection as she grows and changes as a person.
-
Available works by Sophie Vallance Cantor
Click for more information -
-
LILY GERMAN
Lily German’s ceramic and wet clay sculptures sit on, press upon and play with each other. Interrupting the clay surface through smudging, blending and wiping away mud, the constructed forms are manipulated and placed into precarious positions. German activates clay through vocal and bodily interactions, adopting tropes used in performance language and technique. From silence to awkwardness to laughter, the voice is used as a tool to evoke vulnerability and a fragility that can expose narrative merely through breath. The nature of clay and investigation into the voice lend themselves to the bathetic and, sometimes, to failure. -
