Camden Arts Centre hosts A Posthumous Solo Exhibition of Liz Arnold

Written by Karina Lowell Friday, 18 November 2011 00:12

London - Camden Arts Centre presents a new solo exhibition by Liz Arnold, one of the most original painters to emerge onto the London art scene in the 1990s. 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 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.

"I think it's fantastic that the Camden Arts Centre exhibition is giving such an original and much loved painter the exposure she deserves." Gavin Turk, artist.

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. She uses humor in an ambivalent, sometimes seductive, way, and the ‘cuteness’ in her work allows for exploration of the grotesque.

This posthumous exhibition is Arnold’s first solo show 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.

Liz Arnold (1964-2001) was born in Perth, Scotland and studied Fine Art at Middlesex University and Goldsmith’s College.  Her solo exhibitions include Galeria Mario Sequeria, Braga (2000); Lotta Hammer, London (1999, 1997) and Chicago Project Room, Chicago (1999). Group exhibitions include Beck’s Futures, ICA, London (2000); Zauberhaft, Dresden; The Blood Show, Five Years, London; Anxiety, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (all 1999); Facts and Fictions, part 1, Galleria in Arco, Turin; Interesting Painting, City Racing, London; GOD, with BANK, Dog, London (all 1997); New Contemporaries, Tate Gallery, Liverpool and Camden Arts Centre, London (1996); Cocaine Orgasm, Bank, London; Lost Property, W139, Amsterdam touring to Great Western Studios, London (all 1995); Tinsel, Adam Reynolds Gallery, London (1994); Pet Show, Union Street Gallery, London (1993). After her death in 2001, her work has been exhibited in various group shows including Machinic Alliances, Danielle Arnaud contemporary art, London (2008); World Gone Mad, Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury and Castelfield, Manchester (2006); and Painting as a Foreign Language, Edificio Cultura Inglesa, Sao Paulo (2002).

Showing concurrently in Galleries 2 & 3 is an exhibition by Mircea Cantor. In a new sculptural installation, The Need for Uncertainty (2008), two peacocks inhabit a series of large golden cages. Cantor sets up a physically and psychologically unsettling situation for the viewer and prompts reflections on worlds within worlds, and on freedom and its limitation. In Airplanes and Angels (2008), a flying carpet, woven using a traditional Romanian technique, shows motifs of angels and aeroplanes. This is the first of three artists’ commissions in this ambitious new series produced in collaboration with Arnolfini and Modern Art Oxford.

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. Its pioneering and varied programme of artist-led courses and other education activities has gained an international reputation as a model of good practice. Camden Arts Centre is known as a forward-thinking organisation where artists and others can see, make and talk about art. Visit : www.camdenartscentre.org

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