Melanie Carvalho

For her solo exhibition at Cubitt, London, Melanie Carvalho presents a selection of her large-scale watercolour and photographic collages alongside a collaborative painting project OEDescribe a Landscape∂. For this project Carvalho worked with a range of people (artists, friends, school children, Asian women∂s groups) posing the question, "Describe the landscape that represents your idea of home?". According to Carvalho, "the way in which people responded was incredibly varied, a mixture of writing and drawing. Some responded very abstractly. There were interiors as well as exteriors; dreams; barely-there pencil drawings and a five page detailed manuscript. There was a lot of fantasy. One person described living in a filing cabinet. Another described flying through brain-clouds." Recording the written and visual responses Carvalho then interpreted these as a series of over 100 small oil paintings. The resulting paintings are romantic landscapes in a traditional medium, constructed by Carvalho through another's imagination.

At Cubitt the paintings are hung together to create a salon of imaginary landscapes. Both the 'landscape' project and the collages engage with Carvalho's oscillating practice as an artist and her role as a curator; the idea of the unique artwork and the collaborative nature of a group project; the relationship between the written word and the visual image; painting and photography; landscape and genre painting; ideas of 'home', exoticism and fantasy. To coincide with her exhibition at Cubitt and to complete the project, Carvalho is publishing the original descriptions in a limited edition booklet.

Melanie Carvalho graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1997 and was awarded a scholarship at the British School in Rome the same year; she has participated in many national and international group shows and co-curated (with John Maclean) 'The Poster Show' at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York and Cabinet, London 2000. This is Carvalho's first solo exhibition.

Melanie Carvalho
Kuratorin: Polly Staple