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Sarah Graham
New Work1st July - 18th September 2020
Lyndsey Ingram is delighted to announce the gallery's reopening with a show of new work by the British artist Sarah Graham. Known for her expressive, large-scale drawings of the natural world, the artist is presenting new subject matter focused on the surreal juxtaposition of flowers and insects. Hellebores and peonies intertwine in an intimate dance with bees and butterflies, all painted in Graham’s characteristic large scale. Their magnification, combined with exquisite detail, transforms these drawings of flora and fauna into evocative images of a world often overlooked. Viewers are enveloped as they stand dwarfed by the beetles and blossoms so often trodden underfoot.
She has drawn the flowers from life as much as possible and the insects from the National History Museum’s collection. Through the adverse circumstances of the last few months, observing spring at close quarters, Graham’s vision of the beauty and strangeness of nature may be particularly relevant to modern sensibilities.
The show coincides with the publication of the first monograph on her work, written by Ruth Guilding, with photography by Miguel Flores-Vianna (Ridinghouse Publishers).
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Read more about Sarah Graham in Ruth Guilding's essay commisioned for the monograph. Photos by Miguel Flores-Vianna.
View here.
"Sarah Graham brings the natural world before us with a clear, unorthodox eye. Form comes into being with subtly coloured ink blushes, washes, seepages and stains. Mottled pools puddle and soak into the paper, drying to make the volumes of a glossy leaf or petal or the convex thorax of a butterfly. Squid-ink pools of darker brown-black map the stained-glass panel of an insect wing or an exoskeleton’s segments; irridescent pools mark out the patterns of a moth’s brown wing. Graphic, calligraphic dashes and delicate striations define sail-like butterfly-wing cappiliaries, bristling abdomen hairs, twiggy mayfly legs and proboscises. Savage, robotic insects hum and probe between flower petals; the heavy handmade paper bulges, saturated with colour. Nature requires no further manifesto or explanation. Her pictures are – in essence – about wonder and strange pleasures, engaging the eye and mind."
– Ruth Guilding
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