Occidental Dimensions (Gallery)

MAREK  TOBOLEWSKI  |  INGE TONG  |  ARINA  |  KATE BRINKWORTH  |  PAUL LEWTHWAITE | JULIE FAGAN  |  RUTH SOLOMONS  |  JULIAN WILD  |  TOM HACKETT  |  MIK GODLEY

Occidental Dimensions is a collaboration between the artist Marek Tobolewski, (an alumnus from Fine Art Painting at the University of Brighton) and Source the Planet, working in partnership with the Faculty of Arts at the University of Brighton to broaden opportunities and to show emerging art and ideas from across the world. Occidental Dimensions offers a Western perspective of Art that is ultimately bound for a tour of China.

Free and open to all

Occidental Dimension a collaboration between Marek Tobolewski and Source the Planet Ltd, working in partnership with the Faculty of Arts at University of Brighton. The show builds on the commitment of the Faculty to advance and debate new art in tandem with the theme of this Brighton Festival. Brian Eno, the Festival Creative director, has positioned culture as an ecology of ideas, exploring how cycles and the recycling of ideas can sustain the vigor of the arts over time.

Occidental Dimension offers a Western perspective of art that is getting ready to tour China. Overall the aspirations of the project and artists are cerebral, with a clear preference for artistic germination and insight. Their works offer a counter-point to the notion of the excessive artistic ego and irony that has been so prevalent in recent years. Key common threads can be seen 

to run across the artistic strategies employed in this exhibition. These include evidence of the desire for quiet dialogue through the work rather than loud posturing. There is a predominant use of pure colour, and system based working. Many of the artists use repetition and multiple forms, and also work to generate ongoing series of reflective work. These aspects function to create visual and strategic bridges across many levels of viewer encounter. Despite the deployment of at times strong colour, there is nothing brash about these works and the ego of all the artists is subsumed within a backdrop of a broader and more sustainable set of creative concerns, reflecting key issues from the mid 20th century. There is a dominance of critical space between 

the work and the act of evidential authoring, creating pieces which both reflect and subvert issues of commodity culture in the post digital age. 

Appropriation of the found image is evident in the Anon intimate paintings of Inge Tong, anonymous collected memories of found black & white family photos are resurrected with new chromatic life. In Considering Silesia Mik Godley examines identity within cultural memory, displacement and migration. He explores our evolving relationship with the internet and new media focusing on 'virtual expeditions' to his mother's homeland. The flat chromatic uninhabited landscapes of Julie Fagan are both reminiscent of wide-open spaces and the confined monitor of the digital world.  Almost too pristine to touch, they evoke a utopian private space, but beneath the surface there are suggestions of an altogether less homely proposition.  In Wide Shut Eyes Arina Gordienko presents a sequence of large monochrome painted heads positioned in an empty place. Their anonymity and lack of spatial context is punctured by the introduction of a vibrant red headdress, to heavily encode the image.

Julian Wild’s sculpture reassigns utilitarian materials to construct playful visual systems which explore the expressive possibilities of a single line and result in deceptively simple units of sensual form far from their banal functional origins.  In his 2 Line Continuum (CNC acrylic panel) drawings Marek Tobolewski explores strategies of rotating, mirroring and symmetry. Multiple individual forms, emerge from a single repeated structure, building on the success of his recent symmetry painting. Ruth Solomons in the Arrangement series of grid paintings, fragments not only line but structural flow, disorientating our paths of reading with rotations, alternative sequences and placement.  The hand cast Silicone Boys multiples of Tom Hackett's over sized children heads, remind us of the idealised archetypes of childhood as found in children's book. Semi translucent in colour, they are soft tactile and evocative of giant jelly sweets. Wider sculptural questions are presented relating to authorship within an aesthetic of apparent manufacture. Kate Brinkworth uses vibrant colour and photographic influences to explore aspects of consumerism and desire in her paintings. The non-functional sculptures of Paul Lewthwaite are reminiscent of everyday manufactured objects. Their approximation to the ‘real’ reflects the constructed nature of meaning in our fabricated world. Their high craft production draws us in further to their myth, presenting us with an aesthetic that is off the shelf, ready to buy, take away and use. 

Marek Tobolewski an alumnus from fine art painting at the University of Brighton, is currently artist in residence at Djanogly Art Gallery, Nottingham University, concluding with a major solo in May 2010. 

Source The Planet is the main sponsor for the show and a company specialising in bringing large capital items from across the globe for installation in prestigious retail and industrial developments. It’s ethical procurement methods and social conscience of the owner/directors set it apart from the many faceless multinationals. The reduction of costs for industry through procurement and movement of manufacturing, machines and product is their trade, Art is their passion.

Hal Stock, from Source the Planet has observed that "Viewers of art are becoming increasingly immune to the cliché of shock. At best it has little lasting impact and is neutral and at worst results are catastrophic. No more so than with emerging art, it is producing increasing predictability without challenge and without substance." 

Sharing a similar passion for the visual arts the show has derived major sponsorship and support from TFS Ltd who are one of the UK’s most progressive International freight and logistics companies with total global reach and presence.

After further UK  shows Occidental Dimension will travel to China and then return bringing with it art forms offering contemporary Oriental Dimension to the West.