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Recognition
Arnolfini presents four solo shows by emerging British artists, who share similar sensibilities and approaches to art making. The exhibitions will be documented in a book to be published in mid-September. Recognition is curated by Simon Morrissey and Arnolfini.

Friday 16 May – Sunday 6 July
Recognition: Part One
Anna Barriball and David Musgrave
David Musgrave and Anna Barriball share an interest in drawing, but use this means of working in different ways. Their modest approach to art-making involves the use of diverse media, including graphite, perspex and light, and it results in work that is minimally present; the quiet product of intensive labour. David Musgrave’s anthropomorphic forms tantalise our desire to find the human in what we see. They often result from a process of visual translation: a figure made in tape is deformed and then rendered in paint; putty becomes photocopy, becomes biro marks. Anna Barriball’s drawings arise from interactions with everyday objects, from kitchen tables to rubber balls, in which she uses drawing as a form of physical communication. Her dialogues result in works that question the objects that surround us whilst making previously ignored histories recognisable.

Saturday 19 July – Sunday 14 September
Recognition: Part Two
Edwina Ashton and David Mackintosh
The work of Edwina Ashton and David Mackintosh centres on the potential of the pictorial image to communicate messages about the world we inhabit. Mackintosh creates simple drawings with a brush and black gouache – sometimes translated into large marquetry panels – whose visual immediacy contrasts with the bleakness of their world view. Ashton’s world of noble animals and disconnected individuals is brought to life in a combination of fluid watercolour, nervous pen-work and fragments of terse conversation. Fusing the idiosyncratic with the iconic, Ashton and Mackintosh use the directness of drawing to mix bleak isolation and dark humour into a compelling exploration of the human condition.