Before Now….And After

Clock House  London  16 November – 9 December 2000

Mitte – Berlin 10 November – 22 December 2000

The London exhibition was an exploration, transforming the spaces in the ‘Clock House’ of the Cannon Brewery into a ‘journey of discovery’. Each of the eleven rooms was occupied separately by the artists’ work. Marks on walls, the long narrow corridor, fragments of original wallpaper and the grand stairs, were the setting for new and thought provoking installation, photography, painting and drawing.

The space chosen in Mitte, had no resemblance to the Clock House in Clerkenwell. Instead, a gallery like space with white walls in a modern building in this old part of Berlin. The black and white portraits of Helen Sear, the haunting paintings of Frances A Blane and a waxed hollowed Venus of Sheila Gaffney, created strong feelings to be experienced in this empty space.

The British artists, Frances Aviva Blane, Sheila Gaffney, and Helen Sear use different methods and media to a common end: to make tangible human feelings which are unseen yet experienced. All three artists worked to create a contemplative and poetic view of an interior space between memory and the senses. The intention of the artists was to work directly with the challenge of the sites chosen in both cities.