Two for one (June 2008)
The twin talents of two North East artists, Art Evolution’s Eva Bauer and Michael Armstrong, make for a rewarding show beside the Tyne, as the Journal’s David Whetstone explains.
The exhibition Ourspace at the Mushroom Works features the work of two of the resident artists – painter Eva Bauer and furniture maker Michael Armstrong.
Twinning artists in dual exhibitions is a bit of an art in itself. The work has to be complementary but different enough to generate interest.
Michael, who established a company called Afid Design in 2005, says he and Eva first exhibited together last year at the Art Expo on Newcastle Quayside.
Candidly he explains that the prime motive was to share costs. But both were pleasantly surprised at the reaction of the public, some people suggesting it must have taken ages to work out which painting to hang above which bit of furniture.
There were similar reactions last weekend at the opening of Ourspace. Michael says of his furniture and Eva’s paintings: “They almost sell each other.”
This is true. A large, red, highly varnished painting by Eva screams for attention but also draws the eye to the legless and cornerless coffee table below, what Michael terms his T4 coffee table.
This is an extraordinary item and probably not quite like anything you have seen before. “It does have a flat top but I wanted to make a piece where all the edges are curved and where you didn’t really see any straight lines,” says Michael. “I wanted to create a really organic form which most people probably wouldn’t expect to see made of timber.”
Michael has also made an acrylic version of the piece, a glossy piece of functional furniture with no visible joins at all.
He says he prefers to work to commission, creating distinctive pieces out of solid timber and with as few components as possible. “In nearly everything I do there is also some sort of graphic detail – maybe a line – incorporated into the piece.”
An eye-catching new cabinet in Ourspace has no handles but an attractive arrangement of slots to enable the doors to be opened.
The Jimi Hendrix coat stand, in the shape of the late musician’s guitar, has become something of a trademark item. Michael says an architect from Dublin has expressed an interest in ordering 215 of them which has meant discussions with a manufacturer, a very welcome departure from the norm.
Eva, who is German, graduated from Northumbria University in 2001. A new comer to her artwork might divide her work into two. There are the highly coloured and varnished pieces with textured surfaces, the results of many an artistic experiment with a range of materials. Then there are the more delicate drawings with dots and lines, some of them suggestive of a kind of fairytale landscape.
For the exhibition, each piece of Michael Armstrong furniture carries a little Eva Bauer embellishment – a little dot and line pattern hidden away inside a cupboard, for example. It’s a nice touch but the work would gel quite nicely without it.
July 17, 2008 2:30pm
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