Anxiety & Defiance
Anxiety and Defiance includes the work of four artists made during the lockdowns of 2020-21, featuring Duncan Kostello, David Miller, Nita Newman & Paul Newman. They reflect on these times through personal and individual responses to their domestic and psychological worlds and to the reimagination of the urban environment.
Starting in the home, Nita Newman reinterprets the objects within them, including the domestic still life. Different personas and the inhabiting of housebound characters inspired by Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Frankenstein are explored in the reframing of performance work in the home by Nita and Paul Newman and the artist’s studio space by Paul. The exhibition also takes the material textures and frameworks of the home environment into a wider exploration of the domestic landscape by David Miller.
Through the window, there are flights of fantasy, sublime imaginary vistas and feverish dreamscapes, with an ominous apocalyptic storm present on the horizon, elements explored by both David and Paul.
Anxiety about the fragility of our environment is ever present from before, during and in a post pandemic world. It is pressing in on us from climate change to the changing face of where we live with the continuing demolition and rebuilding of new business smart cities like Birmingham, aspects explored by Duncan Kostello and Paul. As Kostello comments, ‘it is part of the entrepreneurialism and politics that are reshaping our lives.’
And finally, not to leave out, the defiant finger to the frustrations, restrictions, and obstacles of the last 18 months…
These are the anxieties and defiant responses by the four artists.
Anxiety & Defiance Thursday 22nd July – Friday 12th August
Thurs 22nd July 5-8pm. Launch event
Friday 23rd-Friday 12th August by appointment only
The Showcase Gallery The Jubliee Trade Centre 130 Pershore st Birmingham B5 6ND