Alke Schmidt New Works exhibition

The recent works by Alke Schmidt are portraits of girls and women working, resting, and fighting their corner. These paintings unsettle, with great intelligence, our typical view of the fashion and beauty industry. They show women of different cultures and ages in the chain of production: at their place of work, fighting for their rights, or simply lost in thought - never as victims, but as focused and gracious forces within the giant of manufacture. Delicately painted upon backgrounds made from decorative patterned fabrics and newsprints, the women are often alone and seem small against the might of industry. The backgrounds on which they are painted appear at first to be colourful, sweet and benign but are, on closer inspection, metaphors for a mass produced world which reveals itself to be sinister, harsh, and without empathy.

Alke’s art practice is driven equally by her love of creating beautiful, often highly decorative images and her passion for equality and justice. Exploring the tensions between form and subject matter, she uses the alluring qualities of her work to comment on social and environmental issues she observes in society.

Artist Reception Thursday 4th October 2012, 6.30pm – 9.30pm