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Latest items? Unedited? Fringe Report Uncut
Samantha Darling:
Exhibition - Encounter
Verdict: 3-dimensional colour
Cheltenham - Everyman Theatre - 12 Jan - 23 Feb 04
Encounter features a group of related 3-D and 2-D pieces by artist Samantha Darling, a past graduate in Fine Art and Drama. The work suggests influences as diverse as the early-60s work of Victor Passmore, Indian mask-work, aerodynamic and kite technology, and the Modern Movement - in particular the sketch technique of Le Corbusier.
Encounter features three main works, each comprising a highly-coloured 3-dimensional object, and three 2-D renderings of the object. From Left to Right, the 3-D objects are named: Shell (90 cm high, 120 cm wide), Son Meets C (70 h, 40 w), Ethel (52 h, 73 w). Visually stunning, they have a chic aerodynamic quality most like kites or especially elegant and complex (and enormous) sea-shells.
Samantha Darling describes her work as '2-D cardboard paintings that take on a 3-D form', and her interest as 'exploring exterior and interior and how they meet'. This reflects the obsession of Charles Édouard 'Le Corbusier' Jeanneret (1887 - 1965) with mapping the outer and the inner ('The plan proceeds from within to without'), and the pieces are strongly architectural with a fine structural quality - it's interesting that the artist has experimented with aircraft aluminium. She eventually chose card for lightness and portability. The artist's portfolio shows them in a phone box, office, as adornments to the human body, on a bridge, in a skip, and (poor Ethel), a lavatory.
Each 3-D piece is formed initially from flat Vibixa printing card about a metre square, painted both sides with white and coloured acrylic. The flats are varnished, cut and bent to produce complex solid objects.
The pieces are designed to be handled, suspended, and stood in exterior and interior settings. The artist Victor Passmore (1919-1998)'s pioneering work on Peterlee New Town, County Durham, in the 1960s was founded on the precept of art in the environment, and Samantha Darling's strident and original work reflects this. The graphical style of her 2-D renderings nods to the architectonic content of his drawings, and the sketches of Le Corbusier (Modulor, and Vers Une Architecture)
Colours are subtly juxtaposed and often extremely bright. They're generally complementary, adjacent on the colour wheel, banded across the flat surface before it's bent into shape. There's a sensuous, passionate quality to the colour quite at variance with the po-faced Modern Movement lads mentioned above, and a strong sense of fun. The artist likes the idea of the pieces being handled by children.
Some of the 2-D pieces are prototypes of a tile design to be walked on. The 2-D trio (as displayed) at the left are (from top to bottom), digital photography, Photoshop black and white, Photoshop, renderings of Shell. Those at the centre are digital images of Son Meets C adjusted with Photoshop. At the right there are 3 photographs, drawn and painted over, of Ethel.
There's a sense of excitement and exhuberance to the 2-D experiments that match the vibrancy of the 3-D pieces and the exhibition as a whole. Samantha Darling quotes Frank Stella (b 1936) and Jeff Koons (b 1955) as admired influences. They're probably quoting her.
END
John Park
reviewed Friday 16 January 04 / Everyman Theatre Cheltenham
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012
www.fringereport.com
