Artist Charlie Pi returns to the Arthouse with an exhibition looking at all his work. Not so much a ‘Retrospective’ as an ‘Introspective.’ A very personal view of work, past, present and future, Charlie Pi is clearing his head by clearing his studio.

Serendipity Doo Dah includes work from his previous highly popular exhibitions at the Arthouse, Angels Descending, Titans and The Tattooed Loverboy, as well as work exhibited elsewhere, such as Tanglewood exhibited at Adonis in Earls Court and Reverie exhibited in the Crypt of St Pancras Church. Charlie Pi also dips into his previous persona showing xerox work from the 1970’s as Charlie Pig of The Synoptic Tie Company.

Present work includes a preview of very different work to be shown at the Redgate Gallery in October under the title Twelve Steps to Sainthood. Charlie is still planning how to exhibit this future work promising that the Arthouse exhibition will be subject to change as it progresses, including a ‘painting of the day’ selected by the first visitor of each day.

The Lewisham Arthouse building, formerly the old Deptford library building, was bequeathed to Lewisham by Andrew Carnegie in 1913. Designed by the architect Brumwell Thomas, one of its most attractive features is the vaulted glass ceiling on the first floor.

Glass Ceiling was a group show of studio members' work reflecting the diverse range of artists who hold a studio within the walls of Lewisham Arthouse.

Lewisham-based, Italian artist Thion shows his latest body of work, I-KU, at the Arthouse. I-KU brings together Thion’s love of words and images by pairing paintings with Haiku poems of his own writing. Haiku, a twelve-hundred-year-old Japanese verse form, derives its evocative power both from its everyday subject matter and the absolute, startling economy of its language. Thion’s verses are true to that spirit but his language is a little less restrained, more ‘street smart’, his subjects those of his particular biography.

The paintings are pure visual Haiku - employing the bold, pared-down language of pop art, Thion sets up a fascinating dialogue between image and word, a peculiar correspondence of changing perspectives in which each enriches the other. I-KU achieves the rare feat of expressing the universal, eternal through description of the fleeting and familiar – in that most difficult of languages, simplicity.  

An illustrated collection of all of Thion’s Haiku poems will be published and Nick Ellis (clarinet) and Eliza Marshall (flute) will perform improvised music inspired by I-KU at the private view.

Thion’s artistic practice, initially shaped primarily by pop art concerns, such as popular culture, the mass media and graffiti-related signs and symbols, has developed beyond these narrow confines and now embraces a wider spectrum of influences, often going beyond the artistic realm. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of and skill in traditional image-making techniques but employing them in an absolutely contemporary context,  his work makes the ordinary extraordinary, elevating everyday experience to magical, mystical status.

click here to see a preview of I-KU

Contact: Thion T: +44 (0)7956 412 910 E: creathion@hotmail.com

www.creathion.com

To every beginning, there precedes an end; with each new act, there is a nullification of what has past. The very notion of the beginning is the subject at play in ‘Alpha’ the new exhibition at the Lewisham Arthouse.  ‘Alpha’ is an exhibition in four parts: Tom Butler, Saul Brennan, Vasillis Chamam and the art group neone.  Exploring the contradictory nature of identity, binary opposition, the origin, and repetition. Through different mediums the exhibition ‘Alpha’ will express the turbulent nature of our language and use, meaning or construction within mark making, and the stability of which we take for granted in the everyday.

… I like the notion of the particle accelerator. The fact that in order to reach such speeds (to ultimately discover something), particles have to go round in circles and return to the beginning again and again; again the phoenix. I say I won’t go round and round but I will, it’s inevitable…

The notions of truth, universality, knowledge, are what drive Saul Brennan’s paintings. But it is his constant doubt that causes friction within his approach. Alpha, each time I write it down, it feels like a lie. Tom Butler has realised notions of repetition and obsession through the traditional processes of pencil drawing and stone carving. Returning to the figure, he uses these traditional media to render the human form with a particular interest in the physical expression of emotion.

…loose narratives, formed by a subverted kind of nostalgia, speak of their own mythical authors. Constructed by the ruins of a self deconstructed; Quasi-biographical and emotional fragments, debris, clichés and gossip put together anthropomorphic follies that gaze into the post-modern 'sublime'. At once fetishized and abject…

Vasillis Chamam is exhibiting paintings and drawings featuring a young male character. They range from the non-specific and indefinite to a more direct self-portraiture. They are a mixture of heavily personal and sentimental notions, put together with the flippant and obnoxious. neone’s work performs a regurgitation of the history of art to create nominal (re)cycles, creating the artificial resuscitation, within the body of art.  Using continual references to the void and self-sustaining vortices.

…between the rock and a hard place, we have fished out the very foundations of our rot, the stagnation of superficial surface and banal core.  ‘Alpha’ in its beginning shall not decapitate the living dead, but breathe new life into the corpse of the phoenix, of our blood…

The Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.  The cycle of history, of style, of daily life, must begin somewhere.

Contact: neone T: 0792 919 5328 E: neoneartist@yahoo.com

It started with the wish for a poetic object. I want it to be a bit like a surrealist poem. You have an area, which looks a bit like leopard-print-tights and another bit which looks dusty, and then you have lines, which go across like smoke. I thought I could conjure up a place or a mood with those abstract things but a glitter curtain would do that so much better. Perhaps these are objects which slow you down, which encourage investigation and discovery within the security of their walls.

They are functional and decorative and ornamental and thoughtful, but they also reach out and suggest a lifestyle, a social function, a relationship, a maker, a user. It seems to be inhabited by a you and a me. At the moment I am making small ones out of cardboard and I keep them in my room. What I get from all of it is this intense questioning of things (designs, objects, materials), different things influencing each other.

The work seems to be the by-product of looking and thinking, existing in the present as well as it trying to attempt a relationship to the past and the future.

"Drawing is like alchemy. A process that involves the transformation of thought, desire, emotion, perception and cognition into the materiality of line. For example the product of the scientists thought; futuristic thinking from the seer; mathematical models from mathematician; the representation of the visual world from the artist; or a child describing a series of events. All these constitute the power of drawing.

This exhibition marks a second phase in Lewisham Arthouse's celebration of drawing. It also marks the celebration and recognition of intrnational Women's Week 2008. In this exhibition you will find the power of drawing from women and students of Lewisham Arthouse and associated studios.

This is an opportunity to enjoy new work, celebrate the work of women and experience The Power of Drawing." Alison Day 2008.

MARK OF ACTION

Mark of Action will celebrate the collaboration of six artists examining combinations of movement and drawing. Mia Fernandes and Anne Marie Kiluu Mbondo will produce a continuous drawing throughout the duration of the exhibition. The public will witness the movements and actions of the artists while they are creating traces that provide the physical evidence of sensory experience.

Drawing as a track of experience will inform the work of Amanda Francis, Eduardo Padilha, Taslim Martin and Charlie Ward. Their work will compare the creation of a drawing with the exploration of alternative mark making, as, for example, through the trace left by the removal of materials.

Alongside the exhibition will be the opportunity for the public to investigate and engage in their own experience of drawing. A room lined with paper and filled with drawing materials will be available as a drop in art event during gallery opening hours on the 16th and 17th of February. Artists from Lewisham Arthouse will be supporting members of the public of all ages for the Mark of Action Great Big Draw.

There was a discussion on Serra’s declaration with the artists involved on Sunday 24th February.

Gallery Open: Wednesdays to Sunday 12 - 6pm
Admission Free
Disabled Access
Transport: Rail/Underground - New Cross/New Cross Gate Buses - 21, 36, 136, 321