'Things on display in Hayes’s museums seem as alive and lively as the people, and the people are as detached as the things.' Barry Schwabsky
Transition is pleased to present a solo show by Georgia Hayes. Her large scale, figurative paintings, which zing with exuberant colour have been called 'resolutely modern' by Martin Maloney, their simplified graphic language bringing to mind Philip Guston, Alex Katz and her immediate contemporaries Rose Wylie and Roy Oxlade.
Our lives are constantly informed and influenced by the spaces we inhabit. For Gaston Bachelard the place for dreaming is the home, while Michel Foucault’s heterotopias describe the place, central to a culture, where reality is suspended, a 'simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live.'
Visiting Diamonds, 2012, oil on canvas, 183x214cm
Heterotopias are both real and unreal at the same time, like the theatrical notion of being transported elsewhere whilst remaining exactly where you are. These 'different spaces' could include the museums, opera house [theatre] and zoological gardens [safari] that are under scrutiny in Georgia Hayes' latest paintings. Animals, museum objects and opera singers take centre stage in equal measure. Indeed, they may be in the space together, calling into question the order of things and pointing us to the thresholds that symbolically mark not only the boundaries of a society but its values and beliefs as well. A fresh sense of wonder, like that which inspired the very first museums, permeates Hayes’s vision. Whether observed from life or imaginatively invented, we are able to recognise ourselves as subjects of what we are doing and thinking, or indeed singing, out loud.
Transition are showing Georgia Hayes' work at the London Art Fair (16-20 Jan) on the ALISN stand in the Art Projects section of the fair.
A Limited Edition print of Dancing to Cajun and a catalogue with an essay by Barry Schwabsky have been produced to accompany the show. These are available from the gallery and online.
  Dancing to Cajun, 2011, oil on canvas, 90x90cm also available as limited edition print
Singing Together, 2012, oil on canvas, 183x183cm
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Georgia Hayes was born in 1946 in Aberdeenshire, Scotland and currently lives in East Sussex. From 1977-82 she was a student of Roy Oxlade. Her group exhibitions include East & South (1992), John Moores 18, Oriel Mostyn (1993), Harlech International (1994), John Moores 25 (2008). Solo exhibitions include SFMOMA Artists Gallery, San Francisco (2002), Café Gallery Projects, London (2003) and Galeria Nacional, Costa Rica (2006). |
