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Detail images : Exhibition flyer Sitar, Nan’s Crochet Cover; Roach ‘Jetty’ (2022) 40.5 x 45cm, oil on canvas panel.

Coming soon

Mudlarks II Dan Roach & Rebecca Sitar

Oceans Apart, OA Studios 24-26 King Street, Salford

24th June to 24th July 2022

Press release by Oceans Apart

‘Mudlarks II features recent paintings by the artists Dan Roach and Rebecca Sitar following a two year collaborative project reflecting on the poignancy of lost objects. Prompted by observations of ‘things’ in the world around them, the artists share a particular kind of pictorial language, where subtle forms of semi-abstraction signal the emergence of something lost, abandoned or obscured by the passage of time.

Alighting on the theme of ‘mudlarking’, a term used to describe the action of digging, searching or playing in muddy ground, Roach and Sitar explore conceptual and poetic resonances between mudlarks’ wanderings and their respective painting practices. Evocative of experiences unearthed from memories as well as spaces, the paintings in this exhibition address the psychological and metaphorical retrieval of ‘long-buried objects’, where mining for the mislaid brings forgotten things to the surface, reimagined, reconfigured and gently seen anew.

“Dan Roach and Rebecca Sitar are artists who wander these visual edge lands; mudlarks seeking treasure, relishing mystery and wonder, teasing with familiarity yet resisting the known. Their works are maps of these shimmering, shifting, sometimes iridescent spaces. Like mudflats, these colour-field surfaces absorb our gaze, often blurring spaces on the edge of vision, sucking us in and holding us suspended in a moment wonder.” – Richard Davey

Mudarks II is a touring exhibition originally shown at the Eagle Gallery EMH Arts, Cabinet Room, London, in December 2021. The exhibition at Oceans Apart brings together previously shown work with new paintings made especially for this iteration.

To accompany the exhibition there is a 42 page catalogue publication which includes seminal works, a forward by Rebecca Sitar and an essay by art writer and curator Richard Davey – please contact rsitar.art@gmail.com or enquire at the gallery for more details.’

Details: The Space Within (2020) oil on paper 35 x 28cm / Installation photo of the exhibition.

Drawn In at The Turnpike Gallery, Leigh, Gt Manchester. 2^nd May – 11^th June 2022

My painting on paper The Space Within (2020) is currently showing in the exhibition Drawn In at The Turnpike Gallery Leigh, Gt Manchester until 11^th June.

The show features drawings and works on paper by 50 international artists celebrating half a century of exhibitions at The Turnpike Gallery. The exhibition includes artworks by Henry Moore, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney and Tony Bevan amongst many others.

‘The first exhibition in the Turnpike Gallery showcased sculptures, drawings and prints by Henry Moore. This was closely followed by an exhibition of paintings by L S Lowry in spring 1972. Since then, the gallery has hosted a diverse mix of artists in solo and group exhibitions of painting, sculpture and printmaking, along with textiles, ceramics, photography, video, installation, interactive light shows, concrete poetry, carnival, digital craft, sound works, kinetic toys and more. The gallery has presented international artists through partnerships with high profile galleries and organisations. It has also initiated projects with a local focus, nurturing young creatives to make and present new work and engage with a wide range of people.’

https://www.theturnpikegallery.org.uk/Events/Exhibitions/Drawn-In-exhibition.aspx

I first showed at The Turnpike Gallery in 2000 with my solo show Mind Breaths. It was a great experience and I am most appreciative to the gallery, in giving me such an opportunity so early on in my career. A pamphlet was produced to accompany the exhibition which included an essay by Emma Hill (director of Eagle Gallery, EMH Arts, London. (Listed under website publications ) The exhibition was also supported by Arts Council England.

Mudlarks Rebecca Sitar & Dan Roach opens at Eagle Gallery, Cabinet Room London.
December 2021 tours to Oceans Apart, Manchester June 24 – July 24^th 2022.

Coming up Mudlarks; a two person show at Eagle Gallery/EMH Arts, Cabinet Room, London, which will feature new paintings by myself and Dan Roach.

This exhibition has come out of a year long collaboration between Dan and myself. The term mudlark came up whilst I was doing research on the nature of lost objects. Mudlarking settled with us as an idea and we began to explore its conceptual and poetic potential; drawing interesting parallels to our ways of thinking and making.

To accompany the exhibition a beautiful 42 page catalogue has been published which includes work from the show and an essay by art writer and curator Richard Davey. There is also a foreword by myself that explains the genesis of the project and how it developed. Here is an extract from the catalogue.

‘Dan and I recognised that we share a particular kind of pictorial language, in that our imagery signals the emergence of seemingly lost or abandoned forms and objects. These at times are evocative of experiences unearthed from memory; a resurfacing of those impressions which had once registered and ruminated over time.’

Mudlarks runs from 8 -24 December at Eagle Gallery, Cabinet Room, 159 Farringdon Rd, London EC1R 3AL open weds -fri 11-6 & Sat 11-4. Mudlarks will also tour to Oceans Apart Gallery Manchester 24 June – 24 July 2022.

Catalogues are available to purchase for £8.00 plus postage, enquiries can be made directly to myself rsitar.art@gmail.com or Dan Roach via DM or Messenger on Instagram or Facebook

Our special thanks go to Ged Young for design collaboration and prepress of the publication, Dave Bennett for photography of artworks and Mike Binding at Galloways Print for craftsmanship in printing production.

(Image details above from left to right Rebecca Sitar, Ruby (2021) oil on panel 26 x 35.5cm. Dan Roach, Sweet Array (2021) charcoal on aged paper 11.5 x 7cm & Mudlark catalogues)

rebeccasitarart
Eagle Gallery / EMH Arts, Rebecca Sitar

DANCE FIRST THINK LATER 8th July and 23rd August 2020 gP General Practice Lincoln

My short film piece Holding Up 2020 will be showing this summer in
DANCE FIRST THINK LATER, an exhibition of artist’s work made during lockdown and available to see in the flesh at @generalpractice project space between 8th July and 23rd August by appointment.

‘DANCE FIRST THINK LATER is showcasing work by 45 contemporary artists made during 15 weeks of lockdown.
We have been so heartened by the way artists have responded to this period, forever resourceful, developing new ways of working with limited means, adapting their practices and sharing their process of making and thinking.

ESTRAGON: I’d rather he’d dance, it’d be more fun.
POZZO: Not necessarily.
EXTRAGON: Wouldn’t it, Didi, be more fun?
VLADIMIR: I’d like well to hear him think.
ESTRAGON: Perhaps he could dance first and think afterwards, if it isn’t too much to ask him
VLADIMIR [to Pozzo]: Would that be possible?
POZZO: By all means, nothing simpler. It’s the natural order. [He laughs briefly.]

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot ‘

https://www.general-practice.net/dance-first-think-later-2020

Holding up was made in sequence to Up Against the Wall. Both films made in the first few weeks to experiencing lockdown in the Spring 2020. Here is the Artists Statement included in Dance First Think Later.

Up against the wall was made in response to circumstances arising from the enforced lockdown due to Covid19. The title can be translated metaphorically; to the pandemic, restricted movement and ultimately to the philosophical implications that this situation ensued.
The need to regain some autonomy, sense of freedom and equilibrium were circling in my thoughts. One day, whilst practicing Qigong outside, I recognized in its improvised form that the shadows had some potential as a live drawing.
The piece echoes an interest in Haiku form of Japanese poetry, and Japanese prints of 18th Century seen historically in my painting practice.

Holding Up carries on exploring metaphor through filming of configured forms, sound and text. Fragments of blackened chard tinder found on a walk, are seen precariously balancing at a single point. Each holding the other up with space in between. An ant scurries through, a bird’s song, a brief inhale of breath; small minutiae of lives lived.

Fully Awake 5.6. Freelands Foundation, London curated by Ian Hartshorne and Sean Kaye

Delighted to be showing in the 5th cycle of Fully Awake at the Freelands Foundation, London 5th September- 3rd November 2019. Showing with Mail Morris and Susan Laughton as my invited artists..

‘Fully Awake 5.6 is an exhibition that explores new ways to understand the development and variety of contemporary British painting. It offers an accessible but critically rigorous platform for audiences to better understand the impact that different generations of artists have upon one another. The exhibition embraces an intergenerational approach to celebrating the practice and teaching of painting, by including artists from a broad range of backgrounds and styles.

In total 72 artists who teach painting in the UK will have been invited to select one artist they had taught and one who had taught them to exhibit alongside each other. By taking this perspective the public has the opportunity to view a lineage of influence among artists that is not normally seen.

Fully Awake is curated by Sean Kaye (British Higher School of Art and Design, Moscow) and Ian Hartshorne (Head of Painting at Manchester School of Art) with support from independent artist curator Harry Meadley.’

https://freelandsfoundation.co.uk/exhibition/fully-awake-5-6

tracer and wedge ps Mirabel. Manchester 8/11/18 – 15/12/18 curated by Paul Cordwell

This November a recent series of my panel paintings including Untitled (grey in pink) 2018 (shown above) can be seen in a group exhibition titled tracer and wedge at PS. Mirabel. Manchester curated by Paul Cordwell. Featured artists : David Alker, Rick Copsey, Samantha Donnelly, Nick Jordan & Rebecca Sitar.

Press release

‘In ‘Tracer and Wedge’ the small scale of the works exhibited demands an enforced intimacy with the viewer. An intimacy unconcerned with the surrounding architecture; except as a vertical support for the isolated sparring between surface and eye.

In that moment the containing rectangle of a picture surface can act as a platform for material play, an impossible spatial conundrum, or an idiosyncratic dissection and re-staging of historical models for fixing visual information.

So, microscopically small areas of paint palettes can transmute into gothic seascapes; severe formal signage allude to senses other than the optical; archaic dioramas can be unpicked and restaged as storyboarded narratives of the paintings own construction, whilst spartan still lifes start to drift away from a painterly and descriptive legibility.

However, edited from the chaos of the real world, all act as a temporary congealing of the movement of thought into a stubbornly solid object event; all allude to actions and forces which escape the controlling stamp of visibility.’

Letters Stolen From The Alphabet.

Contemporary Art, Art Reviews

‘Tracer and Wedge’ is an exhibition spread through the L-shaped ground floor project space of Mirabel Studios (Manchester, UK) populated with wall based art work, all responding to ‘painting’ as a broad thematic.

All artists involved have a historical or active relationship with Manchester art, often going back decades, and this shows in the focus and refinement within their practices; a kind of radical conservatism which seems oddly refreshing.

The relatively small scale of the works exhibited demands an enforced intimacy between viewer and work. An intimacy unconcerned with the surrounding architecture; except as a vertical support for the isolated sparring between surface and eye.

There is also an added complication, the works tend to allude to the act of using painting as a way of momentarily holding static the act of transcription between artistic forms.

As an introductory example, David Alker’s ‘The Seventeenth Century Landscape’ sequence of five miniature paintings – most about 8 cm square – are transcriptions of photographs of a 1920s diorama of the construction of a large seventeenth century wooden ship. With titles sounding like chapters from Moby Dick (‘The Hull’, ‘Capstan’, The Ferry’, etc) the horizontal line of representational paintings of the act of construction imply a narrative progression without a promise of chronological veracity.

Rick Copsey’s ‘Paintscapes’ also uses a reduced scale – here all 20 cm square – in a horizontal display of stormy colour-tinted c-type prints of gothic seascapes. They are, in fact, microscopic photographs of paint palettes vastly enlarged. Another frustratingly layered act of transcription.

The relatively simple still life format of Rebecca Sitar’s slightly larger oil paintings ‘Untitled (Grey In Pink)’, ‘Pods’ and ‘Kernel’ momentarily trick a viewer with a stabilizing familiarity but quickly reveal themselves to be equally destabilizing in the readability stakes: ‘Untitled (Grey In Pink)’ could be a rocky island sat on top of a pale wash of pink over grey or a ragged shape cut in the surface wash. ‘Pods’ seem to be constructing themselves from the space around them and, best of all, ‘Kernel’ is an ill-defined shape sat in a seductively deep purple black.

In stylistic opposition are Nick Jordan’s domestic scale oil paintings ‘California Typewriter’ and ‘Documentary Sounds’.

Both have the strong graphic clarity of Pop Art; both appear to have been transplanted from a European art exhibition set some time in the 1960s.

The most demandingly enigmatic pieces are Samantha Donnelly’s framed c-type prints which look like collages with fragments of figures, studio shots and suggestive explanatory text – all indicating a magazine article about an artist and their work.

So within ‘Tracer and Wedge’ the containing rectangle of a picture surface can act as a platform for material play, an impossible spatial conundrum, or an idiosyncratic dissection and re-staging of historical models for fixing visual information.

https://inventionofthecorridor.blogspot.com/2018/11/tracer-and-wedge.html