Art more than just Art

Art from early days simply involved a canvas, a set of paintbrushes and of course paints. The painting was a universal form of recording people places and news, way before the camera was ever born. We know now that art takes many forms. . In the new world, art can be anything starting from gazing at the clouds to playing interactive slides. But one other area that is also becoming popular is the inclusion of traditional crafts into artworks.

Acclaimed British artists Liza Campbell and Jolyon Fenwick announced their joint exhibition Life’s too short to live in black and white. The show includes the use of age-old techniques such as tapestry, toy marbles and photography.

Liza Campbell came up with ideas that she calls ‘Textual Taxonomic’ in which she beautifully highlights the human flaws such as drugs, alcohol addiction, and what kind of effect it has on men and women. To explore these ideas she uses an old craft of sewing and tapestry to visualize the ideas.

Interestingly, each piece consists of more than 340,000 stitches of silk on washed Linen. The stitch marks make up key words that are the final artwork. Amalgamated with technology, because of the machine embroidery these words are beautifully crafted into modern pieces of art.

Jolyon Fenwrick is recognized for his photography ‘Somme offensive’. These artworks were images retaken of original photographs taken during world war 1, and he went and retook the images at exactly the same place 100 years later.

For this show he will present three series; Virus classics, Compositions with Beetles & Butterflies, and the third collection Decline in mental health.

Virus classics deal with a playful approach, to the Covid 19 pandemic. He has taken classic books and their titles and re-worked the titles and covers taking inspiration from original book covers designed for penguin publishing house by Coralie Bickford-Smith. A few notable examples can be Waiting for Goddo by Samuel Beckett turned it into Waiting for Ocado, Far from Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy’ into At Least Two Meters from Madding Crowds and School Days by Tom Brown into Home School Days.

The other works on show are Compositions with Beetles & Butterflies featuring insects arranged in patterns. Rather than using brushes and paint, he is using beetles and butterflies arranged in patterns to colour his canvas

The third series is the exquisite marble art sculptures gorgeously fallen into mayhem in a geometric pattern. Creating a conflicting approach to art.

We no longer think of art just as paint on canvas art can be stitched on canvas or even butterflies and beetles framed, the world is now a multi-faceted canvas.

Location – Fitzrovia Gallery, 139 Whitfield St, London W1T 5EN

Date – 25^th Oct 2021 to 31^st Oct 2021

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