Coates & Scarry are hosting a group exhibition Complicit featuring a collection of artworks by a trio of strong female artists: Kate MccGwire, Juliette Losq, and Jayne Anita-Smith. Each artwork acts as a sensory invitation to explore other worlds and the show as a whole offers a place for unique and unsettling encounters. Returning from Glasstress 2015 Gotika at the 56th Venice Biennale and a recent show at the RWA Bristol with Peter Randall Page, renowned British sculptor Kate MccGwire creates original sculptures through multiple techniques and materials including paper, glass and a variety of bird feathers that are transformed with swirling or concentric forms. An overflowing vase with ondulating waves of feathers, kaleioscopic creations, and unconventoional scultptures challenge the viewer to think about the relationship between human and nature.

Similarly disconcerting qualities can be found within Juliette Losq’s two-dimensional and installation pieces. Highlighting neglected and abandoned semi-urban landscape clearings strewn with rubbish or covered in graffiti, her practice uncovers a beauty and a wildness within these familiar but liminal spaces. The works are devoid of all human figures but traces of their activity are left behind.

For the exhibition, Juliette Losq also created a large shaped installation in the lower ground floor space with intricate painted paper, which is then rolled and torn over. The exhibition space has been transformed into a surreal beautiful and romantic place where the viewer become a protagonist within the scene, and anything could happen.

Smith’s drawings and paintings, meanwhile, depict ambiguous environments populated by strange human figures in overt pain and in suffering. Sometimes these places seem to depict lush forests or aspects of domestic interiors, such as Rococo chandeliers or wall paper patterns formed from curls, drips and washes of ink. Naked and fully clothed figures wearing historical garments emerge from whirling forms derived from memories and found images. Their character and emotional expression are informed by the artist’s reactions to images of suffering in the media. Smith’s works have a heightened feeling of movement. They seem to shift and form new patterns and figures constantly.

View the full set of pics here

Complicit
Until 4 July 2015
8 Duke Street
London SW1Y 6BN