independent art event

Crashing the Ecology

Posted by Charlotte Squire

kamikazi mask, hanging basket, moss and ferns

Charlotte Squire’s installations in mixed media/found materials have used myth to explore city habitats and how they adapt to change, whether it be physical, technological, and geographic. Since moving to Plymouth and post covid, her practice has moved towards smaller work, and she has introduced ceramics into her work for the first time.

Current work consider how we might live more symbiotically with the natural world given the climate crisis; a small figure on stilts wading through the flooded landscape or a mythical figure growing out of root systems in clay, found objects & textile…

 

Crashing the Ecology 2023 part of Synergy at Leadworks in Plymouth, curated tina Kutter

Seed Head

Posted by Charlotte Squire

 

photo credits Nicky Hirst 2022

 Spirit figures in mask & costume evoke a magic realism of an older culture needing to be recalled as the natural world struggles with our careless treatment of it….

over lockdown the garden became a sanctuary to grow plants to eat and become reacquainted with the seasonal evolution of plants in my patch. Cv19 year 1 was a wonderful growing year. In year 2, my small patch of crops was decimated by unseasonal plagues of caterpillars and slugs drawing me to think about superstitions, ancient deities and past ritual practice invoked to protect the seasons cycles.

Performing Green curated by Kim Thornton provided an environment to add a performance strand to my practice that I had not previously considered

The Curtain Dog

Posted by Charlotte Squire

curtain dog view lr

Tales of the uncanny and personal reference, a self portrait of the artist as a toy – curator Sarah Sparkes’ brief; ‘The Hollow’ formed a segment section of We Could Not Agree, an independent art event at underground venue Q-Park hosted by Geoff Leong, Cedric Christie and Vanya Balogh.

The Curtain Dog stomps past surreptitiously on his makeshift stilts lighting the path with a small bedroom light. Bringing to mind a displaced Diogenes carrying a hopeful small lampshade lantern through the complex sophistication of the art world, his oversized stuffed head and large button eyes purposefully sniffing out a safe passage through the circularity of the subteranean parking space under London’s shopping streets, hotels, restaurants and the seasonal Frieze art fair.
The original curtain dog was fashioned from left over kitchen curtain fabric in the sixties. Making was an integral part of entertainment our growing up world. My dad made us toys; rocking horses, toy chests, puppets, and I, my sister and three brothers made theatres, props, disguises and characters and toys for each other. I made the first curtain dog for my youngest brother who absorbed him into his circle of play friends.

The stilts are part of another story, as this is a portrait of the artist as a full sized toy, they are used to bring the childish character to adult lifesize.

B’twixt and Between at St Giles for GHost’s two nights of classic ghost films

Posted by Charlotte Squire

btwixt lr

 

Camberwell free film festival at St Giles screenings with accompanying installation artworks and performances.
artists: Charlotte Squire, John Workman, Sarah Doyle, Jennie Fagerstrom, Miyuki Kasahara,Calum F Kerr, Joanna McCormick and Anne Robinson.
The screening is curated by Sarah Sparkes with installations and performances.
 
B'twixt & between

B’twixt and B’tween is from a series of cabinet pieces this one creating an infinity box of mirrors and glass shards, an intense emotionally charged installation created for the screening of The Innocents.

The Innocents (Dir: Jack Clayton, 1961, UK/US, Cert 12A, 100 mins) is a classic British supernatural gothic horror film directed and produced by Jack Clayton. Starring Deborah Kerr in a career-best performance the film achieves its effects through lighting, music and direction rather than conventional shocks.
Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) applies for a job as a governess. It is to be her first position and her employer (Michael Redgrave) confesses to her that he has “no room, mentally or emotionally” for his orphaned niece and nephew. Miss Giddens slowly starts to convince herself that the house, grounds and two children in her care are haunted. The Innocents is based on the Henry James ghost story novella The Turn of the Screw (1898).

Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1965, 185 minutes) features dreamlike ghost tales adapted from Lafcadio Hearn’s collections of Japanese folk stories of the same name. This lavish, widescreen production drew extensively on director Kobayashi’s own training as a student of painting and fine arts. Toru Takemitsu’s innovative score compliments the extraordinary and beautiful visuals. This film is rarely screened – don’t miss it!
The film consists of four separate and unrelated stories. The Black Hair, Hoichi The Earless, In a Cup of Tea and The Woman of The Snow.

GHost@Camberwell Free Film Fest

Posted by Charlotte Squire

B'twixt & between-2

GHost hosted two nights of classic ghost films at St Giles Church Camberwell as part of Camberwell Free Film Festival!

The Innocents (dir: Jack Clayton, 1961, UK/US, Cert 12A, 100 mins) screened in the Nave of St Giles Church, Camberwell Church Street, SE5 8RB

Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1965, 185 minutes) screened in the Crypt, St Giles Church, Camberwell Church street, SE5 8RB

 

Sluice, The Dream Machine

Posted by Charlotte Squire

For Transition Gallery’s curated project Dream Machine at Sluice Art Fair
Charlotte Squire reimagines the dream sequence from Hitchcock’s Spellbound as a compact set piece that compresses black and white, light & shadow into Hitchcock’s ideal of making a film in the smallest possible space, in a reworking of Dali’s dream scene from Hitchcock’s Spellbound.

 

Hitchcock’s fascination with film making in the smallest possible space proposes the idea of a compact set piece that allows play with the Freidman argument of sculpture becoming no more than theatrical props against Judd’s ideas of specific objects.

 

The Dream Machine

Posted by Charlotte Squire

Transition Gallery Unit 25a Regent Studios, 8 Andrews Road, London E8 4QN

 

Sluice Art Fair – October 2013

 

The Dream Machine

 Kirsty Buchanan, Sarah Cleaver, Sarah Doyle, Paul Kindersley, Cathy Lomax, Alex Michon, Travis Riley, Alli Sharma, Corinna Spencer, Charlotte Squire, Mimei Thompson

 

‘Even though life isn’t black and white it often looks better that way.’

Barry Gifford

 

 Behind every starry silver screen performance there is a real person who has been sucked into the machinery, restyled and re-presented in a recreated environment as the hero or villain of our dreams. Since the early 20th century Hollywood has transformed these mere mortals into gods, stripping them of their skeleton-laden identities and grinding them out as perfect, plastic covered, star shaped deities. This machine of dreams is of course a charade, and the cinema is a place where nothing is as it seems, a place where the real is always mingled with the imagined.

The Dream Machine is a group show of nine artists who inspired by the black and white magic of early cinema, juxtapose the glamorous imagery, PR driven myths and dreamlike stage sets with the downbeat behind-the-scenes construction and all-too-frequent real life tragedy that is the reality of Hollywood’s dream machine. Because as Joan Crawford said ‘You manufacture toys, you can’t manufacture stars.’