Outliers

• Main Author: Snell, R
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Snell; greenlandic
• Online Access: http://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/12033/; http://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/12033/1/Outliers%20installation%201.jpg; http://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/12033/2/Outliers%20installation%202.jpg; http://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/12033/4/Outliers%20installation%204.jpg; http://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/12033/21/Catalogue-Rosie-Snell-Outliers-web.pdf; https://www.no20arts.com/outliers-rosie-snell

A solo exhibition by Rosie Snell featuring a body of work that includes paintings, works on paper and photography. The Swiss and Greenlandic icescapes to which Snell has been exposed during her latest travels have served as inspiration to the artist for her most recent series of works. From avalanches in the Alps to the ablation zones of melting glaciers, the oils, watercolours and photographs presented in this exhibition capture the allure of landscapes dominated by endless shades of whites and blues. The new body of work builds on Snell’s research on the themes of contradictory and complex relationships, but this time the emphasis is placed on nature itself and more specifically on water and its different states. Fascinated by how the physical changes undergone by water can create very different surfaces and landscapes, or adopt varying forms such as snowflakes or icicles, the artist wishes to replicate these tensions in her works. She states - “I have always had a great interest in the medium of paint, it seems natural for me to try and explore these phenomena in terms of paint and how it can not only be used to represent nature but also how it can emulate it in terms of its behaviour. I use weak layers of paint between more stable ones to cause the paint to move under pressure, or a brittle paint over a flexible one to cause the surface to crack and fracture. I have also been working through these ideas with my drawings and watercolours, cutting and tearing the paper to replicate the pressures these landscapes undergo.” Snell’s dreamlike scenes transport us somewhere between a dream, a memory and reality, and offer a unique opportunity to explore our complicated relationship with nature, its eulogising and destruction, its aestheticizing and, ultimately, our longing for control.