Crystal Peaks

Ross Chisholm’s paintings imagine an eerie beauty or uncanny familiarity. Isolate figures appear astray from Pre-Raphaelite paintings or faded photographs. Dark glades and colourful meadows from illustrations are re-articulated as romantic landscapes. Pastel colour blots the surface of the painting, interrupting the narrative, obscuring a focal truth as isolate elements are reconciled, tattooed with some new accident or moment.

Ruth Claxton creates hybrid objects from mass produced china ornaments. Dandy white and blue figures stand arranged on glassy plateaus as if engaged in some muted discourse. Splendid fungi, harlequin colours or some autumnal shower of sequin mask off their painted faces like strange growths, each figure carefully mutilated to become unique. Ornamental likeness, reflections and material associations draw the world outside Claxton’s microcosmic displays inside whilst buffering viewer and object.

Robert Orchardson’s work recalls utopian tendencies described in science fiction imagery and Futurist design. Forms pictured briefly in novels or film are crafted as abstracted sculptures; a pattern from a film still is rendered as a wooden screen, low-tech resin casts playfully suggest mineral forms in an alien landscape or vintage curios. Freeze-framing fantasy, Orchardson explores the spiritual and conceptual investment in the formal language of the modern.

Ross Chisholm studied at Brighton and Goldsmiths, London. Exhibitions include The Coach House, Brighton, 2001. Ross lives and works in London.

Ruth Claxton studied at Nottingham and the Royal College of Art, London. Previous exhibitions include EAST International, Norwich and Oriel Mostyn 13 Llandudno, both 2003. Current exhibitions include Pilot 1 Limehouse Town Hall London and I thought I was the Audience… (solo, ex cat) University Gallery, Colchester. Ruth lives in Birmingham and is a lecturer in Fine Art at University of Central England, Birmingham.