Gina Medcalf: UNGROUND

Glass paint pots contain the colours. Seven colours. The length is one and a half times the width. The sequence of colours is particular and worked out ahead of the making but the way the image appears on the canvas is nicely left to chance, or the experience of working in series. The palette of colours is changed every month or so, the permutations of red yellow blue green to be seen as they are and as they are intermixed. UNGROUND refers to the potential of the word to suggest new ways of thinking and constructing.

Gina Medcalf 2009

Chelsea Futurespace is delighted to present UNGROUND, a new exhibition of paintings by Gina Medcalf. Her beautifully coloured abstract works evoke glassy sensations of light, whilst quietly drawing our attention to their own materiality – paint and canvas, and the processes and marks of the artist. They seem at once poetic and matter of fact. As she suggests in the text above, sizes, colours and methods are thought out systematically in advance but, once set in motion, the effects of the painting process find their own end or image. Through experience and through working repetitively on a group of paintings the artist can have some idea of the final results but ultimately the act of painting is the moment when order meets chance.

This new show follows on from the exhibition Gina Medcalf Paintings held in June/July 2009 at the Cut Art Centre, Halesworth, Suffolk with a catalogue designed by Kapil Jariwala including an essay by Brendan Prendeville and colour photographs by John Riddy. For Chelsea Futurespace Gina Medcalf supplements and extends this recent discussion of her work and ideas through the publication of a conversation between herself and artist/writer Bernice Donszelmann.

Gina Medcalf graduated from the Central School of Art and Design in 1969 and From 1973 to 1986 she lived, worked and exhibited in the USA. Her exhibitions in the UK include Serpentine Painting 1973; Abstract Painting and Sculpture at Stockwell Depot 1986; John Moore’s 16, 1989; Smith Jariwala Gallery 1990, 1991; Benjamin Rhodes Gallery 1994; Chelsea College of Art and Design Gallery 1999, and British Abstract Painting, Flowers East, 2001. In 2008 she received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award.

Gina Medcalf will be present at the private view and will also be at Chelsea Futurespace
from 10am – 1pm on Saturdays
19th & 26th September;
3rd & 31st October;
7th & 14th November

CHELSEA FUTURESPACE

Hepworth Court, Grosvenor Waterside
Gatliff Road London SW1W 8QP

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