ALEXIS SOUL-GRAY
'No Place Like Home'
Viewing Room 19th October - 9th November 2021
ABOUT
‘No Place Like Home’ is an online solo exhibition by Alexis Soul-Gray featuring 3 new original works, spanning the breadth of the artists current mediums of choice; collage, drawing, printmaking and painting. The works continue the artists exploration of grief, loss, memory, nostalgia and the family unit within a harmonious balance of abstraction and figuration.
The exhibition forms part of an ongoing series entitled '3 Works for 3 Weeks'; an innovative take on the traditional solo exhibition, whereby each artist presents three artworks for just three weeks on the Liminal Gallery website. One new work will be released each Tuesday throughout the duration of the exhibition, accompanied by text, detail images and source material, to encourage a slower and more comprehensive engagement with the artworks and the artist themselves. The exhibition invites collectors to get intimate and build a personal connection with the artwork before purchase.
Scroll down to view the artworks and their accompanying texts.
For all purchase enquires please get in touch.
DETAIL IMAGES OF 'SIT WITH ME A WHILE'
‘Sit With Me A While is a highly detailed figurative graphite drawing which gives way to loose ghostly representation. The characters have each been sourced from vintage magazines and fashion templates from the 1900s. Never intended for long term use, they were produced for fleeting fashion trends, which pass and fade as quickly as the images themselves.
They have been clipped and pieced together by the artist, immortalised and banded together. A girl blows bubbles across the scene, another reminder of time passing, of bubbles bursting, of the norm disrupted by chaos.
After the passing of her own Mother by assisted suicide, Soul-Gray creates work which explores the notion of motherhood and home. This piece, however, seems to be from the point of view of the child, motherless and alone surrounded only by their peers. They pass the time together, cling onto one another but the maternal figure is vacant and the children fade into soft lines and subtle shading.
The collecting of and reference to vintage ephemera in Soul-Gray’s work sings of regaining happier times and memories. We look back at our past with rose tinted glasses and, often, when we think of happiness at home, traditional scenes of the 1950s come to mind. But times have changed and that way of life can no longer be attained.
These girls weren’t created to stand the test of time, but to be thrown away after use. Yet here they stand, immortalised by Soul-Gray to show that no matter how faded or broken, they are present and together, sharing the trauma of their loss.
"I have recently been re examining the relationship my mothers death in 2006 has had on me long term. Her death was a little different as she took a plane to Zurich, Switzerland and drank a lethal barbituate drink in a 'clinic' that looked more like an ex council flat than the sparkly white medical ward I had expected. The months leading up to her assisted suicide were extremely dark, leaving myself, my father and my siblings with unspeakably horrific memories to carry for the rest of our lives. She was terrified of illness and death, she was morbidly depressed. She never came to terms with what was happening and perhaps that is partly why the experience has had such long lasting affects on me and my work. After her death I spiralled into a depressive state and was diagnosed with PTSD...I had nobody to turn to except an on/off boyfriend who I was falling excruciatingly in love with, entangling my feelings for him with the trauma of this part of my life. I was terrified of losing him after losing her. I did lose him and I did lose her."
Excerpt from Alexis Soul-Gray's blog 16th August 2020
THE SECOND ARTWORK WILL BE RELEASED HERE ON
26TH OCTOBER AT 10AM
PRESS RELEASE
‘No Place Like Home’ is an online solo exhibition by Alexis Soul-Gray featuring 3 new original works, spanning the breadth of the artists current mediums of choice; collage, drawing, printmaking and painting. The works continue the artists exploration of grief, loss, memory, nostalgia and the family unit within a harmonious balance of abstraction and figuration.
After the traumatic loss of her own mother, Soul-Gray uses her practice to explore loss; loss of a person and the displacement of love reserved for that person. Using scenes of domesticity from wide ranging sources such as knitting patterns and vintage ephemera, the artist questions notions of motherhood and home. Yet her works are warm, reclaiming the lost characters, releasing them into a new contemporary future. These figures appear softly, tarnished with the decay of passing time, both nostalgic and raw. The artists sympathetic hand and enthrallingly soft loose lines rendering ghostly images from her soft palette to give the viewer a sense of ease amidst the emotively charged works.
‘No Place Like Home’ forms part of an ongoing series entitled 3 Works For 3 Weeks, an innovative take on the traditional solo exhibition, promoting slow looking and true engagement with the artist, the artworks and the concepts behind them. Each exhibition in the series features 3 artworks alongside text, detail images and source material to give an intimate insight into the artworks. Each exhibition runs for just 3 weeks and invited artists are all currently working within the UK.
Each Tuesday at 10am throughout the duration of the exhibition, Liminal Gallery will release a new artwork accompanied by text and detail images onto the dedicated Viewing Room found on www.liminal-gallery.com.
To purchase please get in touch with us info@liminal-gallery.com