Mark Lewis / Mahali O´Hare

Mark Lewis: Howlin’ Wolf

Mahali O’Hare: Kindling Wood

From April 06 – May 27 2007 Spike Island presents three exhibitions by Mark Lewis, Mahali O’Hare and seven artists who have set up an exchange between Spike Island and Finland.

In 2007 the Residency Programme will host: Ruth Claxton (UK), Can Alte (Turkey), Andre Sousa (Portugal), Sonia Boyce (UK), David Blandy (UK), Becky Shaw (UK).

Mark Lewis’ films are remarkable not only for their rich and highly seductive qualities, but also for their ability to undermine those characteristics that define mainstream and avant-garde cinema. The title of this exhibition, Howlin’ Wolf, is perfectly suggestive of a set for a horror movie. Lewis plays with this sense of anticipation, perhaps in a tribute to Hitchcock, a tendency which is evident in his other film works where something, somewhere, is almost certainly happening in the background. Spike Island is delighted to be showing a series of works by Mark Lewis that include Rear Projection (Molly Parker) and Rear Projection (Golden Rod), commissioned by FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) in partnership with the British Film Institute and Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo. These works were funded by Film London through the London Artists’ Film and Video Awards and Arts Council England. Other works have been made available courtesy of the artist and the Arts Council Collection.

Mahali O’Hare presents a series of new paintings in Kindling Wood. Her paintings are small. Their size that makes every minute detail vitally important, from the depth of the stretcher, to the edge and fold of the canvas. The way in which they are hung in the space does not instruct a narrative but implies connections between images, images that seem to have been painted somewhere beneath the surface of the paint. O’Hare is sparing with her information yet we know that each work has emerged from photography, not a large glamorous silky image but the slightly dog eared photograph that might be found in the pages of an old book. O’Hare’s paintings depict a certain way that we might remember things, distant yet intimate. Kindling Wood is a Spike Island commission and Mahali O’Hare is the first recipient of the Rootstein Hopkins Award.

Mark Lewis / Mahali O´Hare