Disturbances

Jessica Hargreaves Karen Marston Kathleen Vance

Firework Gallery is pleased to present Disturbances, a three artist group show.

Disturbances considers our current, pervasive sense of dread, anxiety and instability as it manifests in both personal interior landscapes and in the threat of destruction impending outdoors. These artists inhabit the nuanced, overlapping tensions of interior and exterior space, buffeted by weather patterns both emotional and meteorological. The tenor of these artworks responds to our escalating fears of worldwide disasters both natural and manmade, and similarly our internal domestic terrors of loneliness, intimacy, alienation and frustration.

JESSICA HARGREAVES

In her paintings and sculpture Jessica Hargreaves uses the figure to represent certain emotional states. By employing allegory she shifts the focus beyond any one particular person and towards a more universal situation.

Hargreaves is not really concerned with painting an observed reality. The cinema and its narrative devices are more significant to her. She often uses a similar image or scene over and over, changing colors, angles and gestures. Formal issues and how they too affect the perception and emotional resonance of an image are also important in her work.

KAREN MARSTON

Her paintings examine the blurring line between natural and man-made disasters and how our influence on our climate has enlarged these phenomena beyond their natural proportions. Marston is fascinated by the power of these elemental threats, which have grown larger and more alarming than ever—amplified rather than tamed by modernity—acting as external manifestations of our contemporary zeitgeist.

KATHLEEN VANCE

She will be presenting a selection from her series “Traveling Landscapes” which examine issues of water rights and environmental preservation. As the earth’s temperatures rise, there is a greater and greater strain on our fresh water supplies. Ground water streams and aquifers need to be protected and these works act as vignettes of nature with springs and water flows which show how necessary it is to protect our natural resources and cherish them lest they be destroyed.