Anna Gardiner
New Paintings
24 February - 18 March 2004
Main Gallery




Anna Gardiner's welcome return to London after a five year stay in New York has produced an exhibition that reveals an artist exploring her native land with a fresh eye. In revisiting familiar places she brings new experiences to bear. Her time away has enabled her to recognise and enjoy what is quintessentially British, which is celebrated in this new collection of paintings.

Since graduating from the Royal Academy schools in 1994 Anna has spent her time observing the people that comprise the communities where she lives, works or plays. Hers is a cool but compassionate eye notable for its absence of sentimentality. The nature of human relationships continues to be at the heart of her work, for she is fascinated by ordinary people, all of whom have their stories to tell. The use of gesture, body language and pattern come together to make informal portrayals of individuals who are clearly recognisable yet not specific.

The sensibility in her work is unfailingly urban in spite of the reduced particulars. Stripped of props they are set against abstract fields of colour that suggest either interior or exterior settings while simultaneously minimising particular time or place. With these spaces she allows us to be seduced by the fabulous colour and expressive brushstroke that give the paintings such immediacy.

But Anna's principal talent is her achievement in delivering a sophisticated and psychologically penetrating narrative of her experience of the world.

An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition.