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Hevelepter Five Exhibition of Conremporary Visual Art in Cornwall 4/12/05 -
Reviews

From: Martin Freedmann
Category: Art
Date: 15 December 2005

Review

The fifth Hevelepter exhibition this millenia embarked at the newly appointed Sliced White Gallery in the heart of Penzance, I attended the first Hevelepter in 1999 at The BakeHouse Gallery in Chapel street and queried the constant association with bread and baking, Roger Davison tells me theres none but is mysteriously amused by my enquiring. The Sliced White Gallery is small but not in the least bit vertically challenged,plenty of space around these three artists work, Roger Davison and Jonathan Polkest http://www.slicedwhitegallery.com/jon.html seem to exhibit frequently under the Hevelepter banner-by the way; hevelepter is a Brythonic Cornish language word for Identity or sameness, likeness etc. The artworks varied in all respects but combined to produce a warm inaugural show for this small independent gallery. Roger Davison loops his influenced between Picasso and Alan Davie but theres a plethora of ideas which I couldnt immedietly track but which rang a loud abstract expressionist bell. Davisons work is quite iconic and ythats in part due to a new regime and a newfound freshness in colour representation, gone are the transparent layers of darkening fathoms in comes the a new brightness, not a flat colour but you could be forgiven for thinking so. Roger Davison occupied a whole wall some 4 - 5 metres high with a2 sized gems of immediet urgency. The intuitive core is an obvious feature and it is now difficult to interpret these symbolised meanings, are they bright things being thrown at me ? I like it, like a child enjoys instruments and things they dont understand. This boldness emphasizes the primal and thus rekindles the childhood landscape I remain a little bit mystified, am I zen enough to appreciate the urgency? Roger Davisons work oddly complements Anna Howarths papercuts of North Wales folk lore inspired shadowplay of architypical rurality and rustic charm. The work is a kind of narration set out in layers from top to bottom of a2 size black paper, Anna Howarth refers to the light outside her childhood window throwing shapes onto the curtains, illustrating dreams and mythologies she hears from her grandmother in North Wales. Now based in Relubbus, Cornwall Anna Howarth brings the celtic contemporary touch and sets alight the notion of celtic mythology as an ongoing cultural element, something Hevelepter asserts as a part of its mission is the continuation of the living Celtic arts. Anna Howarths work to me back to my childhood and brought some of those simplicities into my complex fretful now. Considering Anna has shown this work and some video installation at the Welsh National Eistedfodd I feel quite connected to a subterranian force of good. Jonathan Polkests work occupies a large part of the gallery with one piece installed into a well lit cubicle, the piece is titled Illogan Highway Planer and indeed it does seem to be a depiction of a Road Planer used for repairing roads, the work is rendered in a thick dense line of cord, used as an outline but gripping itself to a creamy canvas with urgent splashes of lilac complementing the black linear technique and the soft damasque cream background. Polkest alludes to the destruction of the A30 mainroad into Cornwall and the replaced M5 bringing more angicised attitudes into Cornwalls identity, its a dominating piece and seems a bit too proud to be a protest, Polkest admits he likes a big piece of machinery to draw and treats other subject matter likewise. Some colourful small canvasses have this childlike theme which Davison and Howarth had lingering in their work, I,m surprised they didnt capitalise on the fact as a PR strand, maybe they were alluding to the identity of Childhood!!Jonathan Polkest has shown large pinhole photographs in previous exhibitions including Hevelepter 2 or 3 in St. Ives, Cornwalls own art ghetto, this time Hevelepter Pymp(5) showed Polkests rudimentry textiles infused painting much of it connected to his upbringing in The Isles of Scilly, he was, according to the biographic accompaniment born on the Isles of Scilly at the time when the Artist Dr John Wells was the General Practitioner of the Islands, possibly Polkest was imbued with Wells's initial spark of life affirmation!. I appreciated the complete show and particularly recall the works that bucked the trend of banal illustrative styles that most Cornish galleries appear to overstock. I think that if future Hevelepters are envisaged they should be minimal in their content, the amount of work seemed a little intimidating in what is after all a small gallery.

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