Severyn-Kosinska & Wheeler Takeover
FEBRUARY – APRIL 2024
Artist collaborators Monica Wheeler & Louise Severyn-Kosinska take over the gallery to present the work of 8 artists in 3 exhibitions.
Louise and Monica met on an artist’s symposium in Poland and have been working together since 2000, producing site-specific work and installations in England and internationally in France, Poland and Holland. They frequently show in non-gallery spaces, including a theatre foyer, an abandoned castle, the ruins of a chapel, a mausoleum, empty shops, woodlands and a salt mine. Both artists have a fine art background, discovering themes of idiosyncratic nostalgia in common, telling stories viewed through layers and projections, using found objects, adding painting and drawing, and most importantly adapting to their surroundings. Their work is filtered with emotions, to form new realities which leave traces of what has been and the prospect of new possibilities.
About the Artists
SOPHIE EPTON MOCK
Sophie Epton Mock, navigates the intricate balance between figuration and abstraction, process and image in her paintings and printmaking. Her artistic journey unfolds through the manipulation of figures, which she cuts, reforms, and sublimates, prompting a profound exploration of our connection to the body and its representation in art history. Her recent focus involves a captivating series of print-collages, where cut-out paper shapes dance freely across the canvas, creating an illusion of dynamic movement. Through skillful layering, Sophie superimposes these shapes and silhouettes, offering viewers a unique visual experience that blurs the boundaries between form and fluidity.
Sophie is a French/English artist based in France. She actively contributes to the vibrant artistic landscape as a member of the ‘Maison Louis Jardin’, an alternative venue for contemporary art in France, enriching the cultural dialogue and creative community.
VIOLET MARECK
Reflecting the diversity and fragility of human existence, Violet Mareck is a mixed media artist using a variety of materials for making three and two dimensional artworks. Her work is informed by subconscious and conscious reactions to current events and her own experiences.
Graduating from the University of East London with a BA Hons in Fine Art focussing on three dimensional and mixed media, Violet worked at the Natural History Museum in London initially as a restorer of scientific exhibits and subsequently heading up the Museum’s Production and Project Department. In 2014 she moved to the Isle of Wight and set up her own studio in Ryde with the aim of developing and working full-time as an artist.
Exhibitions: 2015 – 2016 Group exhibitions with the Ryde Art Collective, 2015 – 2022 Open studios Isle of Wight (IoW) and London, 2018 group exhibition, Menier Gallery London, 2020 Solo exhibition Clayden Gallery, Quay Arts IoW, 2020 Solo exhibition, Arch Gallery, Ryde, 2022 Group exhibition, Art House Ventnor Fringe, 2023 solo exhibtion Monkton Art Gallery, Ryde. 2023 Collaboration ‘Messing with Heads’ exhibition. Quay Arts, Newport, 2023 Group exhibition, Rupture Exhibit, London.
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RUTH MIEMCZYK
Absence, separation and loss are themes that reverberate through Ruth Miemczyk’s work, often referencing growing up with two cultures, one English, one Polish. Her work explores the materiality of surface, how it holds and reveals stories of human interaction alongside the very nature of our world.
Born in 1949 in England, of Anglo/Polish parentage, Ruth has been a practicing artist and teacher for almost 50 years. As well as achieving over twenty individual exhibitions, she has taken part in group exhibitions, artist residencies and art festivals in the UK, Poland, France and Italy.
CAROLINE PENN
Caroline Penn uses photography, drawing and text, in films and books, to explore themes of memory, absence and loss. After a career as an editorial photographer and then a magazine picture editor, she returned to the roots of physical production and story-telling with an MA in Book Arts at UAL in 2015. Since then, her work has focused on the domestic environment and our emotional engagement with things. With paper, ink and stitch, she explores our relationship with everyday objects and exposes hidden narratives using the inherent qualities of the artists’ book: to conceal and then reveal a story in an intimate and tactile form.
Caroline is based in Hackney, London and is a regular exhibitor at Artist Book Fairs with works held in major collections including The Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Britain, The British Library & The Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Her film ‘What is Left – That Also Goes’ was runner-up in the Animation category at the 2022 WOFFF film festival.
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HEATHER RIGG
Heather Rigg explores the interpretation of objects and responds to her own collection of objects, given, inherited from family and friends and cared for over several decades. Using different media including, stop animation, photography, text, paper and pressed plants, she works with the objects to creatively archive her collection. She exhibits her work in galleries, art trails and studio open events and has undertaken residencies in Scotland, England and Italy.
Heather lives and works in London and has family connections in rural Derbyshire where she responds to the landscape and nature. She graduated in Fine Art at Wolverhampton University and has a Postgraduate qualification in Education from Roehampton Institute. She worked in the Arts specialising in professional support and development for artists and designers, as a lecturer, research fellow, a freelance consultant and a director of an art organisation. Previously she was a ceramist, exhibiting and selling her work in galleries and outlets nationally and internationally.
LOUISE SEVERYN-KOSINSKA
Louise Severyn-Kosinska works with mixed media including glass, photography, collage, text and print.
Louise graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Portsmouth Polytechnic and a stained glass post-grad diploma at Central School of Art and Design. Her work in held in private collections in France, Poland, Iceland and Spain. As a member of Bigos Artists Collective, Louise has work in the Tate archives. Awarded the Sir Arthur Evans Travelling Scholarship from the Worshipful Company of Glaziers and Painters of Glass, Louise travelled to New York, France, Spain and Scotland to look at contemporary artists working with glass and has had drawings accepted in the International Pastel Biennale with a touring exhibition in Poland, Slovakia and Italy.
Louise has undertaken residencies and artists symposiums in the UK, France and Poland, and taken part in outdoor sculpture trails, and land art shows. She has curated print shows of artists from eastern Europe. Louise lives and works in London.
ANDREW SZCZECH
Andrew Szczech is a painter with a specific interest in the ideas of broken physical and socio-political utopias. He produces series of works that respond to specific sites that represent his core interests: ruined seminaries, disused farm buildings, unloved suburbs.
Andrew Szczech has an MA Fine Art (Distinction), City and Guilds of London Art School (CGLAS), 2021and BA (Hons) First Class, Fine Art, CGLAS, 2020.
Selected Exhibitions: 2023 Corpus, Hypha Studios, London. 2022 Fissured Realms, D Contemporary, London. 2021 CGLAS MA Show, London. 2021 CGLAS 2020 Showcase, Bargehouse, London. 2021 CGLAS MA Interim Show, London, 2020 Visionaries, Landsec, London. 2020 Collective Contemporaries, online., 2020 Final, not Over, Unit1 Gallery, London. 2020 Hertfordshire Open 2020, St Albans Museum., 2019 CGLAS Fine Art Group Show, Art Hill Gallery, London. 2019 Shortlisted for BP Portrait Exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, London., 2019 Artist in Residence, Cass Art, London, 2018 “Shadowbox”, group exhibition, London, 2018 “Six Portraits”, solo show, St Albans, 2017 National Open Art Exhibition, Oxo Tower, London. 2012 Herts Open Studios, St Albans. 2005 Two-man show, Gallerie San Roch, Céret, France. 2004 Discerning Eye Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London.
https://www.andrewszczech.com/
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MONICA WHEELER
Monica Wheeler has worked as a painter, photographer and on site-specific installations in England and abroad. She took part in an artist symposium “ East meets West” in Gorlice Poland followed by a show of site-specific installations that she organized with Louise Severyn-Kosinska and a Dutch filmmaker Anneke Bosma in semi-restored Szymbark Castle.
Monika graduated with BA hons in Fine Art from University of Hertfordshire, a Diploma at John Cass Art School in London and Escuela de Bellas Artes in Panama. She was Secretary for The Polish Artist Association and has curated shows for Posk Gallery in Hammersmith and Bletchley Park, Bucks. She has written articles for the art column in Dziennik Polski and Tydzien Polski. Monika has exhibited in Galeria in Panamá-Colon, Dom Polonia in Barcelona, Spain, Artismixed Gallery, Suffolk, Obsidian Gallery, Suffolk, Deptford X, London, Het Klein Theatre, Eindhoven, Holland, Millfield Theatre, London, MoDa, London, La defense, Paris, France, Sketchbook Project, Brooklyn Art Library, New York, touring exhibition USA and Australia and many more. Monica has taken part in outdoor sculpture trails, and land art shows.