The Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery presents a three-person exhibition of recent work by mid-career London artists Liza Campbell, Lucy Temple and Sarah Hiscox.
All three artists are united by their revival of traditional materials and techniques, and their striking re-definition of their subject matter for a contemporary context.
Liza Campbell was born in the Highlands of Scotland and raised at Cawdor Castle. Moving to London aged 17, she studied Art at Chelsea College of Arts, before relocating to a remote island off the coast of Kenya. It was here that she encountered soapstone engraving, and began studying this traditional African craft in the context of her own work.
Campbell takes found etchings printed on silk and paper and antique photographs, and then re-works them using ink and acrylic in bright, psychedelic formations. Her re-working, which she defines as 'tinkering', 'intruding' and 'attacking', is also felt in the way that she re-titles each work, a sardonic quip written across the bottom of each engraving in the artist's hand, each one-liner humorously re-contextualising the image.
The series, aptly named Putting the Rave back into Engraving, includes engravings dating back to the 18th Century. These will be joined by recent works by Lucy Temple and Sarah Hiscox.
Having studied an MA in Islamic Design at the Prince's School of Traditional Arts, London, Temple is trained in Indian miniature painting, ceramic tiling, calligraphy and icon painting. The daughter of world-renowned icon dealer Sir Richard Temple, she takes traditional Islamic patterns to create meticulous designs on paper in high pigment watercolour.
Hiscox is an icon painter who, painting in the Russian Byzantine tradition, describes her works as 'drawn prayers'. Continuing the strict traditions of icon painting, Hiscox combines her ink drawings with gold leaf on handmade gessoed panel. Her works are small in scale, a contrast to the larger designs of Temple.