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Artist Name
Graham Chorlton
Exhibition Title
'Somewhere Else'
Exhibition Dates
04/03/2010
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27/03/2010
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Press Release
Graham Chorlton
Preview Friday 5 March 2010
Exhibition continues until 27 March 2010
Graham Chorlton first exhibited in Dublin in an exhibition entitled 'The Obsessive Garden' curated by Mark St. John Ellis in the Ashford Gallery at the RHA in 2006. From that Graham was invited to the RHA Annual and subsequently was awarded the De Vere’s Prize for most promising newcomer to Ireland and his paintings became sought after. This is Graham's first solo exhibition in Dublin.
Graham Chorlton is a painter who collects postcards. His paintings from these postcards are diverse in subject from the urban petrol station to the blossoming of a Japanese cherry tree. He is a painter of contemporary practice working on canvas and on board, diverse in his techniques as he is in his subject matter . He is a painter who often has a simple narrative in his work and a pace and an aesthetic suggestive of certain film makers ( Wenders / Tarkovsky / Lynch ).
Graham’s depictions of the interiors and exteriors of buildings, architecture, civil engineering, cityscapes and landscapes are both anonymous and familiar – places we think we might know, or may once have been. They could almost be of anywhere – a factory in rural Poland, a bridge in the suburbs of Chicago, a car park on the outskirts of Paris or Berlin perhaps. While some are of places the artist has passed almost every day for years in BIrmingham, they are generic, archetypal structures from different eras of the modern world.
Without the presence of people, a sense of melancholy pervades Chorlton’s work – a gentle feeling of detachment and anomie that places the artist as a solitary onlooker, an observer on the outside looking in. While this sense of estrangement is enhanced by the accomplished draughtsmanship of Chorlton’s works, they are rarely cold or devoid of humanity. The subtle and complex use of colour matched by a sensitive range of brush marks brings a warmth and curiosity to these buildings and locations – one that invites narrative readings of the work, both cinematic and literary.
In addition to having exhibited in East International, Norwich; John Moores, Liverpool, and at Ikon, Birmingham, Chorlton has had solo shows at venues such as the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham; University College, Worcester, and the Library Gallery, University of Warwick. He was recently awarded first prize for painting in both the Leamington Gallery Open and The Birmingham Open at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
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