GR gallery is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Helen Bermingham with the gallery and in the U.S.. Titled “Where Everything is Held”, the show will present a new series with an intense focus on the artist’s psychological territory, introducing cognitive and emotional landscapes able to sharply communicate, through powerful yet delicate brushstrokes, feelings and recognizable patterns, in a sort of memoir of the past months revealed as the resolved conversation that occurred between unconscious, memories and the material of paint.
This exhibition will introduce seventeen fresh small and large format artworks on canvas. This new body of work, exemplarily executed with the artist signature technique, shows the exceptional capability of depicting emotions, imbued with personal remembrances, through the act of repetition and the fundamental changes that regularly occur in the perpetration of this action.
“Where Everything is Held” is a liminal journey able to find a common ground in between fantasy and reality, stillness and motion, psyche and physicality, abstraction and figuration through a highly unique approach here described by Bermingham:
“In my practice I explore ideas around memory and time. I see my paintings as psychological spaces or ‘fictionscapes’ and the process of painting as a conversation that occurs between my unconscious, my memories and the material of paint.
Central to my process is repetition. I repeat marks, images and brushstrokes from previous paintings into each subsequent new one. I’m interested in the idea that every time I repeat a mark it changes- much like each time you recall a memory it changes. The incidental mark making that occurs when painting is also an important part of my process by which elements of newness or surprise can enter the work. These unplanned marks find an association with the unconscious and take the work in a new direction both visually and emotionally. Paintings start from one position and end up somewhere unanticipated and new, but somewhere new that has a resonance with me. I feel they often throw up ‘new’ memories. Allowing associative thought to play a role pushes the painting along and creates new ideas for further works.
Through my repetition of paint marks from painting to painting, I create a kind of ‘genealogy’ of marks; that connections can be unearthed and excavated from the work. My paintings have become a sort of world building (‘fictionscaping’) out of my own archive of marks that grows with each use.
In this way I see painting as a repository of time and memory. As the work progresses the lines between memory and fiction, past and present become blurred and make way for something new. The marks change and develop to be used again in future paintings thus constantly propelling the work forward while also looking back to the past.”
Opening reception: Thursday May 25, 6:00pm - 8:00pm (Exhibition Dates: May 26 – June 24 2023). Members of the press can contact GR gallery in advance to schedule a private viewing and/or an interview with the artist before the exhibition is officially open. Visitors who want to attend the opening can RSVP by contacting the gallery. Helen Bermingham will be present at the vernissage.
Where: GR Gallery, 255 Bowery (between Houston & Stanton) New York, NY 10002 | [email protected] |
