As Torquay’s Artizan Gallery prepares for a new venture in their home gallery of 10 years, a quirky offering is on the cards opening on 27th August and continuing into September. Partner artists Rosie Burns and Red find common ground for their creative practice in an unusual theme, which has become the title for their new touring exhibition, “Skin”.
Rosie, a multidisciplinary artist, and Red, a maker of functional leather works, work from their North Devon gallery and workshop space where they run a variety of courses from life-drawing to printmaking to leather working. Each has a unique interpretation which they bring to “Skin”, one very physical, and the other more metaphorical.
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For Rosie, the interest lies in using work to challenge the traditional perceptions of men and women. Through her “Sirens” and “Marigold Men” series, she looks to celebrate the skin we’re in with works in life drawing, printmaking and ceramics.
“Sirens”, depicts women as thinkers, strong, singular entities, able to indulge and be guilty of sloth or envy, and still maintain feminine beauty. Works strip away labels like mother or queen and withdraw ingrained lenses that have historically objectified or otherwise been used to exert control.
Rosie is increasingly interested in depicting less well-known women, historical characters in a different light, the juxtaposition of the beauty of the nude with the femme-fatale or warrior woman.
Meanwhile “Marigold Men” is an ongoing series of prints of the male nude wearing rubber gloves, comic and concerned with the depiction of men in advertising using cleaning products alongside the male names given to cleaning products / vacuum cleaners – often using classic poses from art history. With the realm of the domestic still predominantly female, Rosie asks, “Wouldn’t we all like a Marigold Man?” and sees this as a small attempt to redress the lack of domestic male figures depicted in art; not just king, leader, soldier but man who also cleans the toilet.
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Alongside Rosie, Red’s work is interested in the ancient use of leather, a material whose properties our species has relied upon for nearly as long as our existence, if not as a refined material, then as a handy bit of sturdy stuff to tie up a flint to a stick or a material to use as a shelter.
Making leather and making works from leather is a precise, highly skilled craft, currently on the critically endangered list of crafts in the UK. For Red, there is an emotional connection to the highly tactile work, his methods shunning industrial norms of uniformity, in favour of integrity, and complimentary function and beauty, with items designed to be invested in and utilised.
Rosie said “Skin is a borrowing from Old Norse skinn ‘animal hide, fur’, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *sek-, meaning “to cut”; probably a reference to the fact that in those times animal hide was commonly cut off to be used as garment – rather than the more usual contemporary practice of sending it to landfill or incineration.”
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“Skin: Art and Leather from Rosie Burns and Red”, runs from 27th August – 14th September with a preview evening 30th August 18:00-20:00 at Artizan Gallery, 7 Lucius Street, Torquay. For more information visit www.art-hub.co.uk/ex/skin24