| March 5, 2011 | to | April 6, 2011 |
Venue: Royal West of England Academy
Queen’s Road, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 1PX
5th March- 6 April 2011 / Private View 10th March 6-9pm
Abigail McDougall?s second solo exhibition Art for Sustainable Transport takes its inspiration from Bristol?s growing commitment to sustainable travel, featuring familiar local landscapes and city vistas. Opening in March at the Royal West of England Academy?s New Gallery, McDougall explores the popular network of cycle routes, waterways and pedestranised paths in the Avon area. Depicting the surrounding scenery – from Portishead, Bristol and Bath to Bradford-on-Avon – and focusing on the beauty of the natural world, each location has been reached through sustainable means.
The exhibition is held in conjunction with the charity SusTrans, donating 25% from sales of original artworks to the Bristol based organisation. McDougall highlights her passion for sustainable travel and “thinking locally” in her paintings, illuminating familiar streets and scenes by imbuing them with light and colour, seducing both Bristol natives and the region?s many visitors. The show highlights the artist?s childhood passion for sustainability and demonstrates arts growing role in provoking social responsibility for „green? issues, from animal rights to climate change. When it comes to sustainable transport McDougall suggests that “Bristol is making a great start, but there is a good deal to achieve on this front. I believe art should be not just for its own sake, but should fulfil some kind of social or environmental purpose.”
Since graduating from Falmouth College of Art in 2005, McDougall has made a name for herself locally, delivering two critically acclaimed solo exhibitions at Bristol?s Nails Gallery; Bristol in a Different Light and Adventures in Light, alongside multiple group shows. As an RWA Friend and member of the renowned Jamaica Street Artists group, she has also previously shown in the RWA?s annual Autumn Open Exhibition and most recently in the JSA studio showcase Inside-Out at the RWA.
Her contemporary use of watercolour is particularly resonant in this latest exhibition, capturing urban cityscapes alongside more traditional rural localities. Subjects are selected and replicated in a special light, exaggerating the natural colours of the landscape giving it a hyper-real appearance, half-realistic, half dream-like in manner. Sitting alongside her popular watercolours McDougall?s work also takes on a new direction moving into oil, through which she aims to replicate the same vibrancy with an innovative use of glazes. Recent experimentations have seen the sumptuous, jewel-like quality of the colours displayed take on a surreal dimension as McDougall plays with composition, alternating light and shadow, creating impossible sources for her ever-present character; light.
The exhibition comes highly recommended by RWA Trustee and art collector Simon Baker, capturing the essence of McDougall?s inimitable style and the message of sustainability “this is an art as important now as it was long ago; of the painters of Tuscany, Umbria and La Marche who set their cities in the light of their landscapes showing a vision that was sustainable in the face of threat and disorder. The challenges of choice and change – then as now.”
In conjunction with the exhibition Abigail McDougall will also be running an inspirational watercolour workshop on 20th March, places can be booked directly through the RWA on 01179 735129.
Art for Sustainable Transport, New Gallery, Royal West of England Academy
5th March- 6 April 2011 / Private View 10th March 6-9pm
Abigail McDougall: http://www.abigailmcdougall.com/
RWA: http://www.rwa.org.uk/
Sustrans: http://www.sustrans.org.uk/
For further information / images / artist statement or interview please contact Gemma Brace at Jamaica Street Artists jsadevelopment09@yahoo.co.uk
