Phases, Traces, Light
Mother, Daughter, Waning Crescent (2021)
Cyanotype Print
Mother, Daughter, Flowers (2021)
Cyanotype Print
Waxing Crescent, Phases, Light (2021)
Cyanotype and Mixed Media
Blue, Ocean, Tides (2021)
Cyanotype Print
Eclipse (2018)
Video
‘Through engagement with a sense of contemporary feminist theory, the history of women’s suffrage and notions of the gaze, Charlie Betts considers what it means for her to be a woman artist working in the U.K. now, an artist in motherhood, and how this affects her practice. Charlie encompasses a variety of collaborations - in which a flexible and resilient approach expands her artistic identity. When you dance, I wish you, a piece co-choreographed in 2016 by the artist with dance company Everyday People, explored autobiographical elements that Charlie describes as ‘major shifts and phases of life’. It was both beautiful and moving to see a time-based piece so personal and experiential, exploring a huge change her life - of becoming a mother.’
(Garrett, A. in She Performs)
In the Lace Light (2018)
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
Within and Amongst
APT Gallery
Thursday 22 - Sunday 25 November 2018, 12pm - 5pm
Closing Tea Party Sunday 25 November, 3pm - 5pm
The exhibition will explore the boundaries and differences of working individually and collaboratively. [NAME] is intrigued by how this relates to broader contexts within society, particularly in this digital age and sharing economy. Notions of instruction and response echo modes of communication often put to use in the process of collaborating, such as online virtual platforms. [NAME] considers the impact of these forms of communication - the ease of connecting globally and yet the subtle quirks that may occur; mutations, translations or adaptions. The group explores the use of different channels such as social media, video calls, live streaming and emails and the errors or ambiguities that can be created.
The show will bring together many aspects of [NAME]’s diverse work, including curated pieces from the artists' individual practices. Selected works made since [NAME] formed in 2013 will be presented, as well as 'Within & Amongst' a new large scale installation produced specifically for APT Gallery. This piece includes video footage of a site responsive performance combined with other recent [NAME] performances and individual footage of each artist alone in different locations. In sharing films and taking turns, to add to, reconstruct and edit the final work [NAME] explores the boundaries of collaboration. Also presented, ’The Rite’ physically layers individual films within the gallery space, further questioning and obscuring notions of authorship.
[NAME] is a collaboration of four artists producing multi-media installations. The work is poetic and cinematic in nature. Intrigued by text, music, dance and narratives [NAME] has worked with pieces such as Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring and Jorge Luis Borges’ Labyrinths as sources of inspiration which become departure points for a process of research and response. [NAME]’s installations include film, video and drawings, characterised by a sense of framing and reframing, through both the camera and screen. The installations are the culmination of many moments of shared performative experience and the artists’ responses. By combining these responses a non-linear layering occurs within each piece.
As a group of four female artists, an implicit female sensibility infuses the work. Fragments and reflections of movement and dialogue are recorded from the group’s interactions and these present traces of subjectivity through space and time. An interest in the transition of time and the translation of moments, leads the group to use a range of media and technology, including social media to connect spaces and further obscure the boundaries of time, the virtual, presence and absence. The frequent use of mirroring, reflecting and an almost rhythmical ritualistic repetition, disrupts the plane or surface of the images and videos, producing a multi-dimensional perspective. The motifs of mirrors and lenses are recurrent and reference the autopoietic nature of [NAME]’s work.
Within and Amongst
APT Gallery
Thursday 22 - Sunday 25 November 2018, 12pm - 5pm
Closing Tea Party Sunday 25 November, 3pm - 5pm
The exhibition will explore the boundaries and differences of working individually and collaboratively. [NAME] is intrigued by how this relates to broader contexts within society, particularly in this digital age and sharing economy. Notions of instruction and response echo modes of communication often put to use in the process of collaborating, such as online virtual platforms. [NAME] considers the impact of these forms of communication - the ease of connecting globally and yet the subtle quirks that may occur; mutations, translations or adaptions. The group explores the use of different channels such as social media, video calls, live streaming and emails and the errors or ambiguities that can be created.
The show will bring together many aspects of [NAME]’s diverse work, including curated pieces from the artists' individual practices. Selected works made since [NAME] formed in 2013 will be presented, as well as 'Within & Amongst' a new large scale installation produced specifically for APT Gallery. This piece includes video footage of a site responsive performance combined with other recent [NAME] performances and individual footage of each artist alone in different locations. In sharing films and taking turns, to add to, reconstruct and edit the final work [NAME] explores the boundaries of collaboration. Also presented, ’The Rite’ physically layers individual films within the gallery space, further questioning and obscuring notions of authorship.
[NAME] is a collaboration of four artists producing multi-media installations. The work is poetic and cinematic in nature. Intrigued by text, music, dance and narratives [NAME] has worked with pieces such as Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring and Jorge Luis Borges’ Labyrinths as sources of inspiration which become departure points for a process of research and response. [NAME]’s installations include film, video and drawings, characterised by a sense of framing and reframing, through both the camera and screen. The installations are the culmination of many moments of shared performative experience and the artists’ responses. By combining these responses a non-linear layering occurs within each piece.
As a group of four female artists, an implicit female sensibility infuses the work. Fragments and reflections of movement and dialogue are recorded from the group’s interactions and these present traces of subjectivity through space and time. An interest in the transition of time and the translation of moments, leads the group to use a range of media and technology, including social media to connect spaces and further obscure the boundaries of time, the virtual, presence and absence. The frequent use of mirroring, reflecting and an almost rhythmical ritualistic repetition, disrupts the plane or surface of the images and videos, producing a multi-dimensional perspective. The motifs of mirrors and lenses are recurrent and reference the autopoietic nature of [NAME]’s work.
2019 International Women’s Day Exhibition and Workshop
Since their residency at the Watts Gallery Artists’ Village from 2017-8, artists Charlie Betts and Anna Garrett have been fascinated by the inspiring stories of two highly successful and influential 19th century creative women - Mary Watts and Gertrude Jekyll.
During their time immersed in the Watts Gallery surroundings, the artists worked in the landscape of the Limnerslease woodland making drawings, paintings and prints. Stepping back in time through reading Mary’s diary brought the setting of Limnerslease to life- Charlie and Anna found the friendship between the two strong Victorian women inspiring, who together collaboratively designed the Watts woodland landscape we see today.
Moreover, the contemporary artists became particularly interested in Mary and Gertrude’s involvement in the suffragist movement and the local history of women’s activism, in response creating banners and staging their own march through the woodland.
For international Women’s Day 2019 the artists invite you to consider the woodland, nature and plants of the surroundings at Limnerslease that are infused with the history of Mary Watts and her contemporaries. Anna and Charlie’s multi-media work will be displayed in the woodland and parts of the house, and they welcome you to join a workshop in the Clore Studio to create drawings and a collaborative nature banner.
Collaborative work with Anna Garrett
Painting as Ruin explores ideas of the deconstructed painting, the materiality and physicality of the painting object: merging the practices of Charlie Betts and Anna Garrett, to celebrate accidental monuments in the ephemeral potential of the combined work.
The collaborative works teeter on the edge of collapse, with a sculptural quality that creates a fresh response to the idea of painting. Painting as Ruin poses the question of the tension between structure and surface. Changing the structural reality of the work, the artists expose the rawness of the canvas and frame – revealing an honest, sensual yet brutal and raw nature to the constructed painting.
The pieces might nod toward the notion of a ‘romantic response’ to ruins, however the artists address a subversion, exposing truth within the painting object, a broken structure that echoes in the ruined architecture.
Painting as Ruin was shown at Harts Lane, London in 2016.
‘ASSEMBLAGE IS METAPHYSICAL AS WELL AS PHYSICAL AND REALISTIC. THE FABRIC OF MEANING WOVEN BY MATERIALS CAN COVER THE DISTANT IN TIME AND SPACE, AWAKENING A ROMANTIC RESPONSE TO RUINS, ARCHITECTURAL AND SCULPTURAL FRAGMENTS AND THE EVOCATIVE RICHNESS OF OLD WALLS OR RITUAL VESSELS. AS ELEMENT IS SET BESIDE ELEMENT, THE MANY QUALITIES AND AURAS OF ISOLATED FRAGMENTS ARE COMPOUNDED, FUSED, CONTRADICTED SO THAT PHYSICAL MATTER BECOMES POETRY.’
William Seitz, The Art of Assemblage, 1961
