Platform is a selected group exhibition of current and recent art graduates in the South West region, showcasing young and emerging artists who represent an eclectic range of contemporary visual media. Hand in Glove aim to provide opportunities for exhibiting and networking for other like-minded artists, enabling people a stepping stone to involve themselves with the Bristol art scene.

Through Platform, we seek to engage with artists that are in the midst of the transition from further education into professional practice, easing this often difficult process. The exhibition is motivated by a DIY approach for artists to get their work seen, with the intention of raising creative profiles and generating opportunities for those involved. The work is rich and varied, with no overriding curatorial theme; just the driving force and motivation of fresh, young artistic talent.

 The Artists:

Lucy BakerThe five pieces that form Burial are primarily coastal landscapes, which have originated from a series of initial sketches and photographs created at Porthcawl, South Wales. The harsh physicality yet spatial comfort of the rocks is equally as fundamental to the inspirations of these works as visual components of the landscape. The paintings also reinforce the infinities of nature and the capabilities of the sea that encloses such an expanse of mystery

Jack Brindley

  Brindley is interested in the semi-autographic mark, inadvertently made in the often-frenzied            act of creation. Exploiting this friction between intentionality and unintentionality allows him to        comment on the fundamental polar ideas that transpire in thought. The chaotic process of     mark making is something that is rarely understood by the viewer once the work is positioned   in the sterile gallery space. There is a satisfying yet humanistic paradox of applying a system         to something that is by nature chaotic. Brindley uses this as a metaphor for the false          objectivity in language.

Rebecca Darch

Darch’s work acts as a depiction of the relationship between figures and space. Expressing and creating feelings of solitude and isolation in an urban environment, and combining these aspects to uncover ideas of dehumanisation within everyday society; the feeling of being a minority in a majority driven world.

Megan Hoggins

Hoggins’s particular interest in food is its potency in our culture- biologically, socially and symbolically. Universally, food and ingestion are used as a form of communication to express the inarticulate or unconscious. The process of narration invariably changes the story.  Each version becomes an insight into another’s perspective, what they choose to portray and the manner in which they do so. This interest in the inconsistency of narrative is reflected by a process of painting by addition and subtraction, using scalpels and knives to excavate the image.

Kate Montgomery

Montgomery likes to make soft sculptures and set them in installations, working on extreme scales, from the tiny to the huge. One theme which pulls her work together is human behaviour. “I like to people-watch, I like to analyse and document peoples’ self perceptions.  I like to show people up for the idiots they are but I also harbour a great fondness for them”.

Meg Rumbelow

Each of the images show a specific species or breed of animal that is currently tested on in UK labs. The photographic strategy looks at the beauty of these creatures; moving with them in their surroundings, and revealing how each animal interacts with their space and reacts to the artist’s presence, as she tries to re-gain instinct. They are detailed abstract portraits that reflect the individual traits of each animal. The vivid colour adds surrealism to the images, provoking a magical aesthetic.  

David Spraggs

The work explores the perceived ideas and expectations of objects in our daily lives, by using their properties as materials for sculpture. The objects are both domestic and industrial and have conflicting ideological and visual languages. Through artistic interventions, such as, transformation, juxtaposition and dismantling, the ideas of these objects and the expectations of sculpture and installation are explored. The work plays on our understanding of the objects that inhabit our daily lives. 

Tom Sykes

There are two strands to Sykes’ artistic practice, both overlapping each other at various points. He is currently working with a group of dancers, replacing the role of the choreographer, using line and still image to create pathways and movements of dance. Within this, he seeks to raise questions of the nature of performance art, its role and how the viewer perceives it. In other work, Sykes explores the tension and conflict in religion and sexuality - exploring blurred gender boundaries and perceived roles.  The work is camp, theatrical and sometimes over the top, though there are serious notes underlining his practice, whereby he explores biographically his sexuality.