A selection of new painting and installation works by Marcel Craven
Where: Artlink, Hull
When: Until November 5, 2016. Open Mon-Sat, 10-4pm.
FREE
An artist, writer and maker, Marcel Craven works across all disciplines, including painting, sculpture, video and installation. He completed his BA Contemporary Art Practice and MA in Visual Arts at the Hull School of Art.
Marcel has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally, and is currently the artist in residence at St Mary’s Church on Lowgate. He has recently had work published in Kunste Heute Internationale, and was the winner of the 75 Second Short Film award as part of Hull’s Amy Johnson Festival.
Marcel’s work explores artistic and human processes, using playful text experiments, bleak humour, geometry and diagrams to create work that is both entertaining and thought provoking.
This new exhibition at Artlink will showcase a selection of Marcel’s recent work, alongside new pieces produced as part of the “A gift for Guernica” project, examining the parallels between the cities of Hull and Guernica and their histories. Guernica, a town in the Basque region of Spain, is immediately identifiable both for the bombing of the city by General Franco’s Spanish Nationalist Government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the Picasso painting created in response to this atrocity. The cultural, infrastructural and human devastation seen in the city mirrors closely the bombing of Hull during World War II four years later; and the parallels continue in the way the two cities have rebuilt themselves from the ashes of their destroyed industries and landmarks. The paintings themselves follow the style and colours of Picasso’s Guernica – using black, white, grey and off white colours to create work which feels and looks connected to its inspiration.
Marcel describes the work as: “A body of mixed media or trans-media discussions around and about ‘the human condition’ and ‘the human process’; the work examines ‘rebellion’ as both an integral part of the human condition and similarly of the ‘frameworks’ we inhabit and rebel against, and that rebel against us”.
The exhibition at Artlink also marks the launch of the wider “A gift for Guernica” project; a large scale participatory work being produced in the city, in collaboration with local community groups. It is hoped that the exhibition will go some way to promote the project and encourage involvement.
Artlink’s gallery exhibition programme showcases emerging and established artists, local and national, as well as providing community groups with the same professionalism and contemporary art space to show project work.