Blackbird Rook and The Good Ship presents
PET
ZOE SPOWAGE
07.03 - 30.03
Persistence Works, Yorkshire Artspace
I finished making this work mid November 2023, and had my son a couple of weeks later in Leeds General Infirmary. The gestation of my child and these paintings shared time. From the start I was using 'Pet' as the title for this body of work: 'Pet' as in a creature you pour your love into; 'Pet' as in the affectionate/patronising touch of an authority (figure?); 'Pet' peeve/theory/name as in 'held dear'. There was something darkly comic about how lightweight the word Pet is in contrast to the seriousness of having a child.
Ballet, living on compliments, 2023 Conte pastel, acrylic and dye on canvas 153 x 225cm
I was considering who my new self would be - postnatally. The female characters in the paintings are all personifications of my musings or anxieties relating to this metamorphosis. Featured, too, is the unruly family pet, the pushed-out dog, displaced by the new child. And a toyed-with frog representing the cruelty and innocence of small children - a duality that no animal could ever understand, or forgive.
I'm sorry Bella, 2023, Conte pastel, acrylic and dye on canvas 127 x 122cm
Aesthetically, this work is economic in terms of colour, drawing, and surface. It is elegant and filled with open space. Many of these elements feel at odd with my new existence as a mother - which feels chaotic and punk. Babies scoff at elegance.
Zoe Spowage
Swim, 2023, Conte pastel, acrylic and dye on canvas, 203 x 127cm
Cover for little animals, 2023, Conte pastel, acrylic and dye on canvas, 97 x 152cm
The paintings and constructions of Zoe Spowage combine a sharp-witted graphic sensibility with an engaging theatricality. Unashamedly illustrative, they suggest a narrative that is about to unfold, or depict the aftermath of events that have already happened. Her artworks are accessible and energizing, often joyful and seductive, but once we have been seduced there is also an unnerving undercurrent of oddness; a feeling of being slightly off-kilter, reminiscent of the way the familiar and homely is unsettled in fairy tales. We are drawn into a painted drama, set in stage-like landscapes or domestic rooms in which people, animals and objects interact in a collision of styles and shifting relationships of scale that reveal a disconcerting strangeness lurking within the familiar.
Derek Horton (writer-curator)
Oh baby ghost, 2023, Conte pastel, acrylic and dye on canvas, 127 x 97cm
ZOE SPOWAGE
Zoe Spowage is a graduate of Falmouth University 2013. She has been Shortlisted for the British Women Artists prize 2018, awarded the Surface Gallery Prize in 2017, and the Nottingham Castle Open Prize in 2016. She has shown extensively in solo and group formats. Spowage has been selected for a range of UK based and international residencies including: Charles Abbey - Nottingham 2021; Cyprus School of Art - Cyprus 2019/2020; ComPeung - Chiang Mai Thailand 2016; The Old Burtons - Ilkeston 2013/2014. Based at Byron Street Mills in Leeds, Spowage is an active member of art collective PRECIOUS.
Recent exhibitions include group shows at Blackbird Rook, East Street Arts and Pictorum Gallery (2023), a solo at Xxijra-hii , London and Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds (2022), Ruby at Charles Abbey, Nottingham (2021), Broadsheet, Assembly House, Leeds (2021) and Above the law (Girls in boots), Surface Gallery, Nottingham (2017).