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Andrew Howe: In Parallel - The Open College of the Arts

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Andrew Howe: In Parallel

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Level 3 Creative Arts student Andrew Howe has an exhibition opening this Friday at Participate Contemporary Artspace in Shrewsbury.
Andrew is one of OCA’s longstanding students starting almost 12 years ago, this exhibition marks the end of his degree as he brings together his painting and photographic practice.
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My level 3 research project is a site specific exploration of the experiences of the business park and surrounding edgelands on the outskirts of Shrewsbury. My research has covered such topics as space & place, the everyday, psychogeography and walking as art practice.
I was interested in how a highly controlled environment co-exists in close proximity to a very different landscape with elements of wilderness.
A particular event helped define the project for me. Whilst sitting at my desk looking out of the office window, I witnessed a crow attacking, murdering and then eating a juvenile blackbird while its parents looked on helplessly. It was a truly horrific scene, which highlighted a stark difference between the office world, and the world “out there”, separated only by a pane of glass. Life, death and the everyday.
The paintings touch on issues of land ownership, opportunistic or tactical uses of space, and the experience of time and place. I explore the tensions between control and liberty, geometric order and chaos, the organic and the human-made. I consider whether these must always be viewed as polar opposites, or whether hybrid or composite situations are perhaps a more realistic interpretation.
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The diverse work I have produced is a curated experience of the “parallel universes” of business park and edgelands. The paintings may be broadly categorised into:

representational or collage-style paintings, mainly in oils on mdf or plywood board;
reverse paintings in acrylic on clear perspex and acetate sheets;
mixed media painted reliefs constructed in layers of lasercut plywood or acrylic sheet.

Layering is a connecting theme or approach which runs through each of these categories. Layers, whether by physical layers of lasercut materials, by layers of paint, or layers of imagery, offer a means of combining or juxtaposing different concepts. Palimpsest, obscuring and revealing, play a role in these works.
I asked Andrew what’s next in the pipeline for him? I’m going to take a short breather, and then looking forward to spending some time “drifting”, experimenting without the pressure of the next assignment and thinking about what to do next. I’m looking at some exhibition/residency opportunities further afield than Shropshire, and I’m discussing some collaborative work with architects. I also expect to have an article featured in a special edition of the psychogeography/walking zine STEPZ which will be included in an exhibition at the People’s History Museum in Manchester in July.
In Parallel runs from the 4 March to the 26 March, Andrew would be happy to meet and discuss the work with fellow OCA students if you can make it along.
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Visit Andrew’s blog here for more information.
Students wanting their work featured on WeAreOCA should email blog@oca.ac.uk
All submissions will be acknowledged and reviewed but we cannot promise all work submitted will be featured on the blog.


Posted by author: Joanne

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