Camden Arts Centre to exhibit The Fantastic Art of Liz Arnold

Wednesday, 21 January 2009 00:59

LONDON - Camden Arts Centre presents a new exhibition by Liz Arnold, one of the most original painters to emerge onto the London art scene in the 1990's. It includes paintings and watercolours, some of which have never been exhibited before. Her carefully crafted canvases depict cartoon-like animals seemingly imbued with human emotions. They inhabit a world that is both fantastical and familiar. On exhibition from 20 February through 19 April, 2009.

Selected for the 1996 New Contemporaries at Camden Arts Centre, and for Becks Futures at the ICA in 2000, Arnold’s paintings have proved irresistible to both the critics and the public alike. Mythic Heaven (1995), a painting of a smoking ladybird, and Field Trip (1999), a toxic landscape punctuated by green, drooping, phallic plants, are typical of her wit and unique vision. Arnold described her paintings as “little worlds”, created to both escape from, and refer to, the real world.

Inspired by films, cartoons, video games and fashion magazines, Arnold’s influences have a chameleon-like ability to become an entirely new fantasy. Subliminally they still remind us of the Malibu label or the Sonic Hedgehog game that they mutated from. The popularity and vitality of Arnold’s idiosyncratic paintings continue to intrigue current and future audiences.

“I am really interested in exploring the grotesque and the fantastic as genres – and their ambivalent humour which is usually horror tinged and inspired by the absurd. I like to use humour – tactically – it can be seductive and the ‘cuteness’ of the work also allows me to deal with nasty stuff.” Liz Arnold

This posthumous exhibition is Arnold’s first solo exhibition in a public gallery and is curated by four artists: Richard Kirwan, Brighid Lowe, Bridget Smith and Daniel Sturgis. It provides a unique opportunity to reassess work from all periods of her brief but influential career.  The artist died in 2001, aged just 36.

Camden Arts Centre is a venue for contemporary visual art and education, where ideas are made visible and people of all ages and abilities can engage in the creative process of making art.  Our pioneering and varied programme of artist-led courses and other education activities has gained an international reputation as a model of good practice.  We are known as a forward-thinking organisation where artists and others can see, make and talk about art.

Liz Arnold was born in Scotland and studied Fine Art at Middlesex University and Goldsmith’s College.  Like many emerging from art school during the economic recession of the mid 1990s, she established her reputation by exhibiting in artist-run spaces.  Arnold participated in notable exhibitions organised by Hardwork, City Racing, Five Years and with 90s artist collective, BANK. Adam Gallery in Kennington and W139 in Amsterdam were amongst the first to provide gallery exposure for Arnold’s work, leading to solo exhibitions with commercial galleries in London, Chicago, Portugal and Turin.

T: +44 (0)20 7472 5500 / F: +44 (0)20 7472 5501
Camden Arts Centre, Arkwright Road, London NW3 6DG
www.camdenartscentre.org