Jamie Shovlin : 'Aggregate' at ArtSway

Sunday, 01 October 2006 15:37

Hampshire, UK - ArtSway is pleased to be hosting Aggregate, a major touring exhibition of work by Jamie Shovlin, a contemporary visual artist with a growing reputation for innovative and unique work.  Shovlin has increasingly been recognized by a range of national and international institutions as well as a host of critics and writers and has recently exhibited in Beck’s Futures 2006, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and the Art Now Space at Tate Britain, London.

In Aggregate, Jamie Shovlin muddies the boundaries between authoritative systems of knowledge about the natural world such as Darwin’s theory of evolution and apparently inconsequential ways of making sense of the world such as jigsaw puzzles and amateur bird watching. Shovlin is known for taking a hybrid approach to his work that allows him to act as artist, researcher, archivist and curator and here it is the human urge to classify, archive and create systems of understanding that is put under intense investigation and consideration.  On exhibition 14 October until 26 November.

Aggregate brings together a series of new works commissioned by four UK venues: The City Gallery, Leicester; ArtSway, New Forest; Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh; and Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.  Inspired by ArtSway’s rural location in the New Forest, Shovlin has produced a series of frottages (a technique similar to brass rubbing) taken from jigsaws completed by his mother, revealing the often ignored structure of the jigsaw on to which rural fantasies and utopian images are projected, in the search for a perfect grey made by combining Crayola crayons.  Aggregate re-frames small hobbies and pastimes as small exercises of control and order.  In the installation, The Birds in her Garden (2006), the artist draws together his mother’s daily observations about garden birds with illustrative and textual examples culled from the long history of ornithological illustration and taxonomy.

Jamie Shovlin graduated with an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2003.  Whilst at the Royal College Shovlin diversified his practice, focusing on intensive research and employing a wide range of media to transcribe his findings.  This culminated in the richly layered Naomi V. Jelish project (2001-2004) which has been acquired for the Saatchi Collection.  Recent solo exhibitions include Lustfaust: A Folk Anthology 1976-1981 at Freight + Volume, New York and Fontana Modern Masters at Riflemaker, London.

Visit ArtSway at : www.artsway.org.uk/