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Just another art show...?

Thu. April 7th 2011 - Thu. April 28th 2011
The latest exhibition of works by local artists Lara Scarr and Tani Hamagishi-Allen.

After meeting in art school years back they have shown work together throughout Vancouver, Victoria and mid-Vancouver Island. Despite working independently of one another, from their home studios, they confess a shared love and appreciation for mixed media arts. Both have been exploring this medium through directiv...es in their latest series.

Scarr has been developing Thread&Paint Revolution which integrates the use of stitching, collage and paint washes. The imagery selected in her work offers an air of eeriness and humour. Scarr has a sensibility for combining elements that may appear familiar but leave an uncertainty when the totality of the piece is being considered. Her use of line and texture offer a visual labyrinth for the eye to get lost in. Simultaneously, the tactile quality of her surfaces speaks to the sense of touch that can’t be satisfied as each piece exists behind glass and frame. She self professes a thrill for the “strange and unknown” and thrives to break stereotypes associated with the media of art.

Hamagishi-Allen works within a similar but different ideology when creating her latest series the Porcelain Dolls. Many of the pieces in the series compositionally use both collage and illustrative elements. This repetition addresses the awareness of an obsessive tendency found within her. She speaks of her artisitic process in terms of self assigned confines from which to create multiples not duplicates. Hamagishi-Allen especially enjoys the effects that form and colour have and utilizes such in her work. When composing her pieces she simplifies collage down to “coloured shapes” and builds both the surface and the image around that. In doing so, she attempts to disguise their origins by altering their context and usefulness.
Both Scarr and Hamagishi-Allen play in the world of abstraction and alteration. They enjoy the range of responses and interpretations that such curiosities bring. To them, that’s the inspiration.



For more information on either of these artists please visit their websites at: http://www.larascarr.carbonmade.com http://www.tani.carbonmade.com

Artists: Lara Scarr, Tani Hamagishi-Allen