4m2 Gallery Presents Spring Vernissage: "Era di Marzo" by Geoff Uglow
John Cabot University’s 4m2 Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit of paintings by British artist Geoff Uglow, Era di Marzo // It was in March. The show runs from March 21 through September 23, 2019.
The vernissage will take place on Thursday, March 21st at 6.30PM in the Frohring Library.
The title Era di Marzo // It was in March, is inspired by the Neapolitan love song, “Era de maggio,” based on the 1885 poem by Salvatore di Giacomo, which describes a love born and sustained in the heady scent of roses and the recurrence of their blooms. Era di Marzo // It was in March alludes to the vibrancy of a moment that is entirely of itself because of its mutability. It is not a past remembered but rather the unfolding gesture of an embodied flux, a powerful belief in tomorrow.
Le Coussin de Josephine. Oil on wood, 60×70 cm. 2018
Geoff Uglow’s paintings transform the temporary, fleeting delicateness of rose blooms into vital, vibrant experiences that seamlessly merge past and present. He creates each painting in a single day; the intensity of this process enables him to capture and translate specific moments in time: the gentle scent of blooming roses, the delicate morning breeze, the crystalline dew.
Above all, Uglow’s works explore the act of looking. The gesture in the application of the paint, rendered in complex and visceral surfaces, is less concerned with the representation of roses as objects than with the processes of painting that may conjure up the effervescence and vigor of blooms. In this way, the roses are at once metaphors for and doubles of the gestures and processes of painting.
The three works, Cubile Veris, Alpheia’s Dream, and Le Coussin de Josephine, each in different ways allude to growth, change, and regeneration as a creative process. They hence form a compelling, unified experience of being at the cusp of a captured moment – entirely befitting the equinoxes that frame the show.
Born in 1978, Geoff Uglow is a British painter from North Cornwall. Considered one of the greatest talents to emerge from the Glasgow School of Art in recent years, he has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Sainsbury Scholarship at the British School at Rome from 2002-2004. Featured in several galleries in the UK, including The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh, and Connaught Brown in London, and at the Royal Academy 2018 Summer Exhibition in London, his works have also been exhibited in Rome and Dusseldorf.
The exhibit is sponsored by The Vanessa Somers Art Project, which was founded in 2018 with a generous donation by JCU Trustee, the Honorable Frederick Vreeland, Former U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Morocco. Named after Vreeland’s late wife Vanessa Somers, an accomplished artist herself, the project aims to promote the arts on campus.
The 4m2 Gallery is an art space curated by the Art History Society. The space has a double nature, physical and virtual, bridged by the idea of creation. The space creates a parallel between the creation of contemporary art and the development of new research. Contemporary artworks are surrounded by the history of art, juxtaposing the past and the present, just like new research is generated every day from, and among, past research.
