Isabelle Scurry Chapman & Lauren Levy

Isabelle Scurry Chapman‘s small-scale mixed media paintings on wood panels in the New Work exhibition reflected her deep interest and admiration for cultures in which making images and spiritual practice were one and the same. Chapman combined the real and the invented, respecting the identity of what she witnessed in the world while at the same time, allowing herself the freedom to evoke the awe she felt in the presence of nature. Chapman strove for this wedding of product and process in her own work. While the work was reminiscent of surrealism, it was more about the extraordinary quality of the real, the things Chapman encountered on a daily basis.

Lauren Levy‘s small-scale sculptures are made of shiny colored buttons threaded on steel wire frames. In most of Levy’s work, every piece of wire is covered. Often she would string beads or more buttons to conceal the supporting wires and piled bunches of small buttons around the collars of children’s dresses and edges of shirt sleeves. This is her way of creating a visually rich jewellike object.