Madeleine Child and Philip Jarvis @ Mary Newton Gallery
The Age of Aquarius
Artists are obsessive magicians that constantly challenge the ways we connect with the world, by means of engagement and creativity; and there is a growing tendency amongst them to (re)use and recycle everyday objects and give a new life to detritus or "left-over". There is also a growing fascination, perhaps echoing our current environmental situation, for the mineral and the organic, that are capable of evolving ways to survive... So the idea of a growing obsession can quickly come in to minds when looking at the work of Madeleine child and Philip Jarvis presented at the Mary Newton Gallery, and described by the artists as coral from obsessive compulsive nervous fiddling.
Out of rubber bans, paint-saturated sponges, ceramic polyps and pottery, they made joyful and bright sculptures , that mirror both complex marine life systems and sophisticated embedded decorations, raising questions about nature versus culture; but also male/female, authentic/inauthentic, funny/serious...etc. With a contagious humour, and through an engagement with the everyday, whether they imitate domestic detritus (as seen in their previous work) or they use them, they express something crucial about being in and of this planet, about the here and now.