Iain Andrews


We live at a time where shifting cultural assumptions have shattered fixed notions of continuity and value. The essential truths that Postmodernism has denied – love, evil, death, the sacred, morality and soteriology have become absent from much contemporary art as they have from wider contemporary culture. Yet Postmodernism’s failure to offer consolations or answers to these enduringly relevant subjects means that as an artist, an awareness of modern developments must be balanced by a dialogue with established traditions and past narratives, and yet not become nostalgic. Terry Eagleton, and Peter Fuller have both argued for the importance of art to be able to tackle these big subjects. Whereas in the past, the artist or thinker had the shared symbolic order provided by religion within which to refer and ground their work, the artist today must find a way of surviving the bewildering plurality and subjectivity that has become the norm, if the truth of what they have to say is to maintain any force or credibility.

My paintings begin as a dialogue with an image from art history – a painting by an Old Master that may then be rearranged or used as a starting point from which to playfully but reverently deviate. My recent work is concerned with the struggle to capture the relationship between the spiritual and the sensual, apparent opposites that are expressed in my work through the conflict of high narrative themes and sensuous painterly marks. The sheer enjoyment of making these marks is not intended to be a Dionysian pursuit that drowns out the appearance of the real through a curtain of subjective, expressionistic gestures, but rather an attempt to transform and redeem the form through the act of making. Fuller talks about how, in the past the artist could ‘transform the physically perceived by the manifestation of allegoric devices like haloes and ‘human’ wings, whereas now this can only be realized through the transfiguration of formal means like drawing, colour and touch’ . The act of making becomes inseparable from the message that is being conveyed through the marks, one of the importance of transformation and redemption.
It is vital that pictures are not sedatives, but are capable of evoking sensation and awakening feelings. I hope to frustrate the process of recognition through treading a path that plays between the borders of figuration and abstraction, and thus slow down the viewer by creating a space for sensation to emerge. I want my works to be sensuously addictive, worldly and material, yet also to have a sense of contemplative silence akin to a religious icon.
I currently work as an artist in residence and Art Psychotherapist at Trinity High School in Manchester.

Peter Fuller – Images of God, Hogarth press, p.61

Iain Andrews – Curriculum Vitae

6 Saddlewood Avenue, Manchester M19 1QN. U.K. andrews.iain@yahoo.co.uk

Education

1998–2000 Sheffield University, PG Dip. Art Psychotherapy
1996-1997 University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, MA Painting
1993-1996 University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, BA(Hons) Fine Art

Solo Exhibitions

2007 New Paintings, Tregoning Fine Art, Derby
2007 Pockets of Silence, Attic Art Gallery, Bury
2005 Golgotha, Albion Green Gallery, Didsbury, Manchester
2000 Transfiguration/Deposition, St. Paul’s the Crossing, Walsall, West Mids.
1999 Passion, St. Paul’s the Crossing, Walsall, West Mids.

Group Exhibitions

2008 Imaging the Bible, Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth
2008 Deby Open, City Art Gallery, Derby
2007 From Bacchus to Barbie, Signal Gallery, London
2007 Sefton Open, Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport
2007 Battersea Contemporary Arts Fair, London
2007 SOA Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London
2006 Derby Open, Derby City Art Gallery, Derby
2005 Stations of the Cross, St.Mary’s, Stoke Newington, London.
2005 Art Of Imagination, touring European Exhibition – Galerie Venere, Italy - Lofthouse Galerie, Germany - Silos Gallery, Spain
2004 Challenge the Nail, Salon des Arts, London
2003 Art and Vision, touring Exhibition – Williamsburg Art centre, New York – Gallery 37, London – Kircudbright, Scotland
2003 Religion, Art and War, Salon des Arts, London
2002 Eyepoppers, City Art Gallery, Gloucester
2002 Art of Imagination, Gallery 37, London and Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham, Rutland

Competitions, Prizes and Awards

2007 Sir Leslie Joesph young Artist Award, Finalist - Glynn Vivian Art Gallery,
Swansea
2007 Celeste Art Prize, Shortlist, London
2002 LUKAS Drawing Prize, London

Other

2007 Artist of the Month, Lancahsire Living
2006 What the world needs now, BBC 1