Blue Shop Gallery presents
Alice Hartley
FALLING OVER BACKWARDS
9th - 26th March
PV Drinks 8th March 6-9pm
72 Brixton Road, Oval SW9 6BH
Exhibition Events
Artist Talk at Blue Shop Gallery | 12pm-1.30pm, 18th March 2023
ALICE HARTLEY
Hartley was born in 1988 in the South Downs where she grew up, she graduated from Kingston University in 2010 with a BA Hons in Illustration and from the RCA in 2013 with an MA in Fine Art Printmaking, she has since been selected for New Contemporaries, had residencies in Canada, New York and Athens. Hartley lives and works in South East London and continues to exhibit around the UK, Europe and North America
Hartley set out in printmaking, making large scale woodcuts, her work referenced dreams, familiar landscapes and with fragments of her own text. Her time in the printmaking department at the RCA encouraged her to push scale as far as she could and take her mark making to a more expressive outlet in mono screen printing. The mark became more intuitive, forceful and the voice more urgent.
Alice Hartley had two sell out shows at Blue Shop Cottage in 2021 as well as appearing at London Art Fair in 2022 and we are thrilled to now be representing her as a gallery artist. Alice is a true painter working through a silk screen and directly onto the canvas and her emotive expressive works have brought thousands of collectors down to the Blue Shop Cottage, this is her first solo show at our brand new Blue Shop Gallery in Oval, South London.
Over the last 10 years Hartley has used this process to make giant site-specific installations, filling gallery walls, billboards, disused car parks and shop fronts. Her palette is recognisable as is her text, from it we get a sense of something deeply personal but always ambiguous.
BA Kingston University | MA Royal College of Art
FALLING OVER BACKWARDS
Surface has always been a predominant focus in Hartley’s work. From curiosity to devotion, history and science - her practice has effortlessly oscillated between and expressed itself in various forms. Woodcarving, applying layers of traditional gesso on board and sanding them back, using silkscreen like canvas or carving into dense layers of paint - physical and laborious, the process of her creations have as much intention as the desired result.
The seed of Hartley’s knowledge and curiosity came from her fathers practise in conservation and restoration. Both of which gave her not only knowledge and respect for deeply rooted traditions, but the tools and skillset to apply those traditions to her own practice. Her intrigue then grew furthermore. Whilst studying her Masters at the RCA she found an expressive outlet that created a fresh dialogue in her work, the process of mono screen-printing. From small unique editions to large scale installations commanding attention and dominating any space they occupied - the combination of Alice’s intuitive, curious nature & the mediums and traditional processes she explored organically expanded her practice and increased her appetite to new and thrilling heights.
Hartley’s intrigue in recent years has also lead her to back to the fundamentals, oil and canvas. Now her dominant medium, she has further explored a deeper purpose and connection to her practice. Whilst maintaining the same labour intensive curiosity as her previous works - in the stretching, priming of canvas, expressive mark making and her symbiotic riots of colour - there is also a more intimate conversation between artist and painting. For her new body of work Falling over backwards we witness this act of surrender. Hartley interrogates what it means to define oneself in life and in the act of creation - expression applied to surface, examined, acknowledged, seen. Here, she has intuitively created more vulnerable works and vibrant expressions of time, of feeling, of emotion. A striking visual language is present, uniquely her own, a language that is gently confrontational and raw.
Hartley says- ‘we must understand that painting is highly sensitive, it can be complex and sometimes overwhelmed in itself, this is also part and parcel of being an artist, of being human. Maybe we’ll never get resolution, understanding, but there can be a simple beauty in the act of seeking it.’
Text by Alice Hartley and Hattie Stewart
To register for the catalogue email hello@blueshopcottage.com