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An Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture and Ceramics

By David Cowley and Barbara Wakefield

Study for ‘Mozart K.421, St Martin-in -

the-Fields’, Acrylic on paper, David

Cowley

Detail from ‘Evening Song

Satyagraha, Philip Glass’, Porcelain

Panel, Barbara Wakefield

When

Tuesday 11th – Saturday 15th September 2012

Opening hours: 11am – 9pm

Where

54 The Gallery

Shepherd Market

Mayfair

London

W1J 7QX

Contact

Barbara Wakefield

E: barbara@barbarawakefield.co.uk

W: http://barbarawakefield.co.uk

David Cowley

E: david@davidcowleyart.co.uk

W: http://davidcowleyart.co.uk

A few steps from the bustle of Trafalgar Square, on the eastern side, is the entrance to St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

Open the church door and be drawn in by the music and the striking new stained glass window of this recently

refurbished church.

This is the site that has inspired David Cowley’s most recent series

of paintings. Using acrylic on paper and canvas he has taken the

spaces of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and the performance of Mozart’s

String Quartet K.421 by the Lazarus Quartet to create visual

analogies of auditory remembrances. Both subtle and bold dramatic

colour, translucent layers and dense areas of paint all contribute to

give the feeling of sound echoing, floating and reverberating within

this space.

Over the years David Cowley has created paintings and sculptures

based upon the performances of classical music concerts in St.

John’s Smith Square, St. Alfege, St. Luke’s and many other City of

London Churches. Performance, architectural space and musical

score come together in paint to provide these visual and auditory

analogies.

‘St. John's Smith Square, McCabe

Symphony No.7, Labyrinth’, Acrylic on

paper, David Cowley

Imagine a musical score with its complexities of rhythm, pattern and

code. Manuscripts laid on handmade paper, finely printed Baroque composition to the beauty of contemporary

musical notations which challenge the traditional notion of the score, are source material for Barbara

Wakefield’s finely worked porcelain panels.

The use of porcelain for the making of functional and artware is well

known for its qualities of strength, whiteness and translucency, and it

has also long been associated with sound, especially in the Orient.

Barbara’s knowledge of musical notation leads from her experience

as a musician to an individual artistic approach where sound is

evoked in her technical treatment of materials on porcelain. Ceramic

materials lend themselves to a multitude of textures and marks in

and on the clay. By using processes of layering and techniques of

printing and drawing, Barbara uses clay slips, pigments and glazes to

build up layers from images on notation, musicians and musical

instruments suggesting particular pieces of music.

‘Acoustic Screen’, Porcelain, Barbara

Wakefield

Large and small slipcast porcelain bowls, with reference to sound within space both contained and of the air,

compliment these porcelain panels and notations, also embracing the music of Bach to Glass.