THE OWL Service, a group exhibition, will be on display at Transition Gallery from March 8 to March 24, 2013.
Participating artists are Lucy Boyle, Benjamin Bridges, Lindsey Bull, Luci Eyers, Stephen Harwood, Daisy Richardson and Isaac Willis.
The visionary tendencies and post-modern fantasies of contemporary painting are examined in The Owl Service, which takes its title from Alan Garner’s 1967 ‘low fantasy’ novel of the same name.
Garner was one of the influences on the 2011 exhibition The Dark Monarch at Tate St Ives, which outlined a lineage of British art that takes its inspiration from a particular type of mysticism that has its roots in our collective Gothic imagination.
In his introduction to the exhibition, co-curator Michael Bracewell explained how the 20th century was marked by new developments in technology and mass media, but that Monarch was interested in tracking ‘the shadow of that century’, signposting various relationships between modernism and the occult.
Bracewell asserted that no matter how much technology accelerates, there will always be an aspect of art making ‘which will want to look at the mysterious, the enigmatic and that which cannot be explained.’
The Owl Service pays homage and honours these propositions, showcasing seven contemporary painters who play with the metaphysical myths and magic of painting’s alchemical template, unleashing more ghosts from the machine.
Times: Friday to Sunday 12 – 6pm.
Transition Gallery, Unit 25a Regent Studios, 8 Andrews Road, London, E8 4QN