Always on my mind

An exhibition in aid of The National Brain Appeal

Opening Party Tuesday 26th July 6pm till 9pm

The Fitzrovia Gallery

139 Whitfield St, London. W1T 5EN

Magda Archer: (Born: London, England) Star sign: Cancer)

"Simply put I paint  what I would like to see. My paintings tend to be little references to things that are happening to me. Why they look how they look is a bit of a mystery to me but they have evolved. That's the way it works. I like bright cheerful colours and I do laugh when things go wrong in my life - so I guess these things come out in what I'm painting."

Gordon Beswick:  (Born: Stoke-On-Trent, England. Star sign: Scorpio.)

Gordon: "My series of six small paintings are informed by lines, colour and geometric shapes visible in our environment. They are also about repetition and not being able to come up with new ideas or having anything new to say, but realising that it is often best not to worry too much about it and keep painting. I like the paradox of John Cage's famous quote; "I've got nothing to say, and I'm saying it and that is poetry..."

Sasha Bowles: (Born London, England. Star sign: Libra)

Sasha: "Having never got over the simple props, special effects and studio settings from TV programmes of my childhood, such as Dr Who, Space 1999, Play for Today and The Clangers; I work across mediums to create paintings, artefacts and provisional environments that are a means of storytelling but are not a narrative. an evolving loop, dealing with illusion, intervention and metamorphosis; immersed in historical tropes encountered in houses of grandeur and often using as a jumping off point; the Baroque bravura of artifice."

Nick Cave (Born: Victoria, Australia. Star sign: Virgo)

Nick: “In 1981, in London, I saw the movie This Is Elvis. I had always been an Elvis fan, with a special love for the songs he made in the seventies – Suspicious Minds, In the Ghetto, Kentucky Rain, Always on My Mind – and had a particular obsession with the gospel album, How Great Thou Art that he recorded in the early sixties. The last ten minutes of This Is Elvis changed my ideas on performance forever.”

Billy Childish: (Born Chatham, England. Star sign: Sagittarius.)

Billy: “I made the painting of The Eternal Now (bridge over the Seine' after a visit to Paris. I wanted to take my 15 year old son to see the Van Goghs at the Museum D'orsay as he was interested in becoming a painter. Also I had never visited the Louvre and wanted to look at the Delicriouxs there. The other print (Two States of Mind) comes from a work I had a serious breakdown when i was 58.I was put on medication but didn’t like it so came off and have been trying to use natural remedies. This would have been painted when I was tipping between normal me and desolation me.”

Matthew Collings: (Born London, England Star sign: Virgo)

Matthew: “These drawings have particular subjects like a fleeting image in a dream, but each drawing on the whole is about the mythologies accompanying, surrounding and generated by art-making and art appreciation by the audience for art. We don’t see art straight we see it through art-cultural ideas. With my drawings I spell out some of the content of these ideas, content which is usually highly compressed and confined to the realm of the subconscious."

Alice Herrick: (Born: London, England. Star sign: Capricorn.)

Alice: “Elvis is everywhere and nowhere. He is always on somebody’s mind while we live in a world of multiple images and thousands of impersonators! My work is often focused on the human face and portraiture, so for this show I have used a popular paper mask image of Elvis in his prime as a template for a series of quick portraits. Elvis was a great beauty, and studying his face makes me wonder again at the infinite variety of features, proportions and expressions of the human face, how these play out in our minds, what provokes aesthetic pleasure, curiosity, or some more mysterious attraction. I have used brush pen and water to make multiple images, hoping chance and alchemy would reveal something spectacular and also allow a myriad of ‘impersonators’ to surface.” 

Corin Johnson Born: (Warwickshire, England. Star sign: Pisces / Aries.

Corin: "I like to make work about stuff I like and am interested in . Things that excite me . My work is mostly sculpture-representing human and animals  figures sometimes with a twist , using a range of materials ….I hope a lot of the work speaks for itself."

James Johnston Born: Guildford, England. Star sign: Pisces)

James: "My work is primarily concerned with the existential, exploring myth, archetype and the subconscious."

Francis Macdonald: Born: Glasgow, Scotland. Star sign: Virgo)

Francis: "I enjoy drawing people I like or admire and sharing the images on-line. It’s fun, relaxing and good for my mental health and creativity. Drawing Elvis is tricky - maybe because he is so iconic. But I was glad to try and capture him across different eras while helping to raise money and awareness of a good cause."

Kate Murdoch: (Born: Cambridgeshire, England. Star sign: Aries).

Kate: "The two pieces of work I've made for the 'Always On My Mind' exhibition are 'Meat Too' and 'Reflection' both of which feature women - 'good' women, essentially - women compelled to conform to what society expects of them. Female identity is one of the themes I return to again and again in my work. A lot of the work I make addresses the different ways in which women, through the male gaze and objectification, are often judged by how they look and how they behave. I'm fascinated by the inevitable restrictions this imposes on women - living our lives under scrutiny, constantly reminded of 'knowing our place' and often unable to exist freely or be our true authentic selves. This inequality between the lives of women versus men is something I've been acutely aware of from a young age and continues to be an issue I think about a lot. As well as addressing these issues on a personal level, 'Meat Too' and 'Reflection' open up opportunities for a response from a wider audience and invite further social and political debate around gender and women's place in society."

Carson Parkin Fairley (Born: Homerton, England. Star sign: Leo rising, Taurus sun and Aries moon.) 

Carson: "I always have celebration on my mind these days, so my work takes the form of tiny celebrations of peoples lives and their stories. There’s so much to peoples lives we don’t see, and everyone’s stories are so fascinating. So it was a real joy researching and creating this ode to Elvis’ life with all its nuances."

Harry Pye (Born: London, England Star sign: Virgo)

Harry: "My paintings tend to be of people I love or making references to paintings of the past that I love and they tend to be made in collaboration with old friends. Paintings can be postcards to the world that document a moment or inarticulate speeches from the heart that make other people feel less alone. A lot of my paintings are both happy and sad and they reveal how I see the world and what's been on my mind."

Elena-Andreea Teleaga (Born: Rădăuți, Romania. Star sign: Pisces)

Andreea: "I usually play around with photographic materials and I create works such as prints, collages and installations. These two works in particular have been created during the first Covid lockdown in London in 2020. It was a period of time when I was looking again at a collection of images I found back home, in Romania. Sometimes I get hooked by such images and I transform and reframe them in order to give them another life."

Twinkle Troughton (Born: Coventry, England Star sign: Virgo)

Twinkle: "Ever since I can remember, nature and wildlife have fascinated me. I would collect worms, caterpillars, tadpoles, and was even found cradling a dead shrew in bed at the age of five hoping it would come back to life. I still love nature and wildlife, with a particular love for birds. I can even find affection for urban pigeons, and when I was at university, I spent a whole term making work celebrating this unloved bird. The Elvis Impigeonator is a pigeon who isn't constrained by its scavenger reputation, it's dreaming big. It sees a life where it can be Elvis. And why not?"

Tracey Williams (Born: Hull, England Star sign: Capricorn)

Tracey: "I’ve always be fascinated by light since a I was a kid, falling asleep with my eyes open and dreaming of swimming in the sea in my world map and the tiny wee man who used to dance and do acrobatics on the shadows reflected on the walls from the street light. My experiments with LSD at art school and how micro dosing is now being trialled for those who do not respond to antidepressants. They all link in with what’s been on mind the most recently which is recovery and of course, light and how it affects my wellbeing."