Ghosts

25 –  5  February 2011
Menier Gallery,
51 Southwark Street,
London Bridge, London SE1 1RU

Open late Thursday, Friday till 8pm
Artist’s talk 12pm Saturday, 29th of February

‘Ghosts’

‘The sole true something – This! In Limbo Den’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Limbo (1817)

‘Ghosts’ is the 3rd solo exhibition of London-based artist Josephine Lyons. Devised as a single installation for the Menier Gallery, this exhibition will feature 26 paintings.

The works presents a subjective and open-ended narrative. It explores the way meaningful connections are created between disparate experiences and between works of art, making a coherent work from a range of individual ‘moments’. The notion of tales is key to her work, as is the idea that a subject can be developed and understood through a series of different moments, motifs or images.

The exhibition is divided into four spaces: ‘Ghosts’, ‘The space in between’, ‘History’ and ‘Location of Other Realms’. The ‘Ghosts’ series explores the joyful and the terrifying. Lyons is interested in transparent faces reflected in ghosts as described by Coleridge in his poem Limbo : ‘his eyeless Face all Eye; -/ As twere an organ full of silent Sight, / His whole face seemth to rejoice in light! /Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb, / He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him’. The exhibition includes also a collection of portraits from 2007-2010.

Josephine is interested in creating work that is both complex and evocative, and accessible. Josephine sees art as an adventure to make ideas and insights accessible sometimes as questions, sometimes to encourage more.

Josephine cites among her influences artists such as Howard Hodgkin, J.W. Turner, Lucas Cranach, Van Gogh, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, and Regina Jose Galindo, as well as Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Editors Notes – Josephine Lyons (born in London, 1983) studied at Goldsmiths (2002-06). She has exhibited in group exhibitions in London and Oxford, including ‘Opera and art’ at Covent Garden Film Studios (2007). Her first solo exhibition, ‘Unexpected Signs and Location of Other Realms’, was held in the old Woolworth’s building in Crouch End, London, in June 2009. Her last solo exhibition of over 50 works, ‘I’m in Love with the World’, was held in Oxford in 2010. Josephine Lyons lives and works in London.

Supported by the Menier Gallery, 51 Southwark Street, London Bridge, London SE1 1RU
OPENING TIMES: Tue – Wed, 11am – 6pm; Thurs – Fri, 11am – 8pm, Saturday 11am – 6pm, Sunday and Monday Closed.

Works are for sale as part of the exhibition.