ArtHouse Jersey Pop Up with La Folie Collective artists
This weekend sees the return of ArtHouse Jersey’s Pop Up exhibition series, with three artists Marc Medland, Sam Carney and Eliza Reine showcasing their work and welcoming guests to our HQ at Greve de Lecq Barracks. The three artists are all based at ArtHouse Jersey’s La Folie Studios, which are located behind the La Folie Inn, St Helier Harbour's old tavern.
Artists studios are in short supply on the Island, and ArtHouse Jersey is able to provide these much-needed working spaces thanks to the generosity of Ports of Jersey. Creatives at La Folie work with a wide range of mediums including photography, videography, ceramics and painting, and will be bringing some choice pieces to the Barracks across the weekend of Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 July between 10am and 5pm each day.
Marc Medland is an architect and illustrator working in Jersey. His degree in architecture in Birmingham was followed by studies at the Bartlett School of Architecture, under the headship of Archigram founder, Peter Cook. More recently, he has undertaken short courses in Experimental Printmaking and Art Direction for Film at Central Saint Martins. His current projects demonstrate his invented parallel worlds. These are set in extreme situations such as crumbling downtown New York; deserts in Mexico; verges and central reservations of Dutch motorways, a rocky beach in Aran; the Fisher Ridge Cave System near Cave City, Kentucky; rooftops of Paris; or trailer parks in Los Angeles.The characters are colonists who occupy and inhabit these places by means of his architectural schemes, which encourage them to participate in the creation of their own dwellings. The cast includes social climbing Ed & Nancy living on the streets of New York in their adapted European micro-car and preyed on by The Scream Crusher; a C21st Orestes heroically fighting the self destruction of his own house, the penitent hermit living on a remote beach in Aran and who operates a baptistery launderette made of fish skin and washing machine carcases; doomed South American industrialists in their ill-fated flying machines; Frank, the axe-wielding murderer and caretaker of the Hacked to Death II morgue/crematorium complex on New York’s Roosevelt Island; and a group of outcast monks inhabiting a series of parasitic buildings attached to host structures in East London.
Sam Carney says he has always enjoyed looking at the drawings and studies of great artists. ‘They have a freshness and an intimacy, sometimes even a playfulness that has always intrigued me; they give an insight into an artist's work that isn’t accessible in any other way.’ In his own work he uses them as a means to learn from other artist’s work and explore it through his own lens. Sam says there is a feeling of directness and freedom when working in this way that he hasn’t yet got to by any other means. Sam started working at the studios at La Folie a few years ago. ‘It can be hard to find dedicated studio spaces, so having these studios available through ArtHouse Jersey has been an invaluable resource for me. Moving into my first space was a great step to me being able to keep developing my practice after leaving college and as I’ve gone on I’ve found myself constantly learning new things about the uniqueness and importance of the studio as an environment for making work.’
Eliza Anna Reine is a visual artist from Latvia based at La Folie studios. She creates mixed media collage artworks focusing on woman form and elements of nature. Eliza’s artwork celebrates femininity and the mysterious nature of women, justified in vibrant color combinations. The process of painting for her is akin to meditation, allowing her to reflect upon her own internal landscape. Her work involves taking images of women and transforming them completely and placing them within an abstract environment where your imagination is guiding you without any distractions. She covers women with flowers as a symbol of safety, accenting eyes and hands that take focus away from advertisement, and turns it into questioning. What is it that this woman is thinking about rather than the expensive handbag in her hands?
All three La Folie artists will be on hand to welcome people to ArtHouse Jersey’s Pop Up Greve de Lecq Barracks this coming Saturday and Sunday between 10am and 5pm on both days. We kindly ask that everyone wear a face mask at all times when inside the studio space. There will be a limit on how many people can be in the room at any one time.