Empire Gallery  

30 Vyner Street London E2 
 

Private View: 6-9pm, 11 September 2008
Open 10-14 September 12-6pm

Attention Please! Fresh on the art scene in Hackney- borough host to the most artists in Europe- are three artist printmakers Anthony Broad, Leigh Niland and Mallatratt jockeying for position on a street famous for its galleries, vying for your attention in an extravaganza of pictures beholding tales of the male encounter, the forlorn, the familial constellation and the bygone days of Hackney Wick.  Your attention will swing from woodcut to collagraph, monotype to sculpture and from drawing to painting.

Anthony Broad is exploring contemporary representations of masculinity. Layered monoprints are generated mainly from images of sportsmen. The work explores the nature of manliness, societal expectation, male interaction and sporting theatre. The figures at the heart of the work are avatars expressing anger, hope, joy, loss and sometimes tenderness. 

London-based American Mallatratt presents work that explores relational aesthetics where human relations and family dynamics are integral to the work. Collographs and woodcuts show a matriarchal fascination with re-telling narratives in a generational perspective. Feelings of pride, sadness, and loss are infused into studies of recent and distant family.

An American painter/printmaker, Niland summons light from blackened mezzotinted plate: figures emerge among outlines of vanished places- the former industrial wastelands of Hackney Wick serve as metaphor for human psychological state of being.  Drawings, paintings and sculptural pieces manifest emotional experience.