Guest Curator Heidi Donohoe Highlights The Work Of Guido Salimbeni, Steven Porter & Glenn Badham
About Heidi Donohoe
I have 30 years experience of working in the art world. Formerly a head and lecturer of an art and design department in higher education, I became freelance in 2014 to represent up and coming artists practicing in a variety of disciplines – including music, performance and film.
As a curator and archivist I have worked with clients – Arikha Arts Association Ltd and Blain/Southern, London; Sculptor Cathie Pilkington RA; Sculptor Richard Wilson RA; Visual Artist and Sculptor Doris Salcedo at White Cube, Bermondsey, London and presently Photographer and Filmmaker Alison Jackson.
Guido Salimbeni – Jacket
Guido Salimbeni’s Jacket’s, in my opinion, encapsulates a series of personal icons portrayed through his suggestive handling of paint to create three-dimensional forms.
Each Jacket suspends empathetically from its coat hanger to convey a sacred sense of figurative fragility and quietness within its own occupied shrine of warm painterly brush
strokes. Salimbeni’s work does require attention from the viewer, to form a closer relationship to his personal icons – the Jacket’s and as Salimbenis states; “an opportunity for pleasurable contemplation” to the emotional stimuli that inform his particular vision of making and creativity.
Steven Porter
The orderly but explosive vibrant colours of Steven Porter’s image’s play on the juxtaposition of ideas and the process of quick successive drawing - the ‘haha’ moment of realisation to when the abstraction of colour develops into some sort of form and carries out its unattended investigation.
Porter’s exploration of colour and its relationship to the next colour stands upright against the starch whiteness of the paper. The colour red is fearless against its opponent blue, yellow slowly shadowing orange to create a translucent two becomes one.
Geometric and organic forms are evident in Porter’s working process, but equally is the extreme spectrum of pattern and design unconsciously invented by the artist’s own hand to create the sublime.
Glenn Badham
I love drawing! pencil, pen, and ink - so I was instantly drawn to Glenn Badham’s work, in particular ‘Sulby Pump House’ a disused pump house on Sulby Reservoir.
I find Badham’s application of line, tone, and depth as an interwoven pattern of storytelling and reminiscences. His observations invite the viewer into question and feel a new empathy for the derelict building now timely tagged in another’s own response.
Once a functional building, has now become part of its landscape. The trees and foliage lean in and over the building, holding the pose for only a second, before performing together again the constant weather changes.