Sim Smith is pleased to announce Vanessa Garwood’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Story Circles.
With paintings made during her residency at the historic Porthmeor Studios in Cornwall, the exhibition explores Garwood’s consideration of painting in communication with a shared collective knowledge. These recent works give access to communal stories alongside more personal motifs that act together giving shape and form to her internal landscape. The images are built on the symbols and concepts in play before and behind her speech and actions. We see an instinctive subconscious world, with the imprint of childhood in flux with adult desires and contemporary influences.
The power of story runs through these figures without protagonist or linear narrative. There is no ‘correct’ ending, or clear morality message, it is a hidden emotional world with no beginning or end, the characters are suspended in a circle unbound by the laws of nature, choreographed with unearthly light and colours. Her references are varied and in conflict with each other, intentionally jumbled to give the viewer an honest window into clashing and evolving ideas. The paintings suggest a need to interact with and question the cumulative body of inherited narratives that can define and shape us.