About the artists:

 

Ewan Thoth

 

The photographic work of Ewan Thoth prompts us to enter his liminal landscapes, the in-betweens of two worlds, the upside down, the mirrored and the provisional, water acts as protagonist forming the uniting element of the individual works. Influenced by the landscape works of the German photographer Axel Hütte, like him Thoth is a great explorer and finder of the sober micro-landscape. Ewan Thoth is especially moved by the landscapes of Leicestershire finding beauty even in a minor puddle. Liminality is expressed through intertwined depictions of the real world, the imaginary reflected world and the limit between them.

For his project, water became a most important element, the aspect connects him with his older colleague André de María who also employs water to create atmosphere and texture although in a different way. One may think that both are equally influenced by the Russian director Andrey Tarkovsky who used water as a recurrent element, e.g., in “Stalker” or “Nostalgia”. Tarkovsky remarks:

 

"There is always water in my films. I like water, especially brooks. The sea is too vast. I don't fear it; it is just monotonous. In nature I like smaller things. Microcosm, not macrocosm; limited surfaces. I love the Japanese attitude to nature. They concentrate on a confined space reflecting the infinite. Water is a mysterious element... because of its structure. And it is very cinegenic; it transmits movement, depth, changes. Nothing is more beautiful than water."

 

Tarkovsky, cited after Peter Green (1993), “Andrey Tarkovsky: The Winding Quest”, Macmillan, London.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alberta Pessao

 

The selected mixed media works by Alberta Pessao bring the liminal into the making of art itself. She forms her compositions as possibilities based on chance encounters: discarded paint and rests of material that she has at hand are composed into little organic abstractions. They represent an in-betweeness – colour test/scientific collection - A micro-world of discrete creatures that she provides with the opportunity of being.

Alberta Pessao first started to paint and to create compositions late in live. She often uses the discarded oil paints and other materials of the students at The Loughborough School of the Arts. While she was cleaning and sweeping the fine art building (her daily job), she began to use found leftovers of various paints and oils to form simple but compelling organic creatures that remind us little creatures from the deep sea. Her inspiration comes from her original home A Guarda - a small town of fisher(wo)men in the Miño river estuary in Galicia, at the border between Spain and Portugal. When the Fine Art student Ewan Thoth discovered her outsider compositions, Alberta built a relationship with the school and began to collaborate for this group exhibition about liminality. This has resulted in an expansion of her practice towards the use of a wider range of material like watercolour leftovers or discarded canvases. Is it her and our question whether this is real art? If so, how can we define real art? Her inquiry is also related to the necessity of humanity to create, to try to trap the moment, and to deal with the possibility of being of certain uncertainties.

 

This is the creature there has never been.

They never knew it, and yet, none the less,

they loved the way it moved, its suppleness,

its neck, its very gaze, mild and serene.

Not there, because they loved it, it behaved
as though it were. They always left some space.

And in that clear unpeopled space they saved
it lightly reared its head, with scarce a trace

of not being there. They fed it, not with corn,
but only the Possibility of Being.
And that was able to confer
such strength, its brow put forth a horn. One horn.

Whitely it stole up to a maid - to be

within the silver mirror and in her

 

Rainer Maria Rilke (1922) Sonnets to Orpheus II, 4 (translation: J.B. Leishma)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andre af Maria

 

This artist reflects about movement and explores it through an intuitive investigation into dynamics and motion channelled through his own experiences as an indefatigable traveller. First, involved in the making of zoetropes to construct repeating moving images, now Andre shows us in his experimental video work the sensation that one has in these liminal states when all is moving, nothing is static, one may feel to be trapped or to go in circles. One might even return to a previous situation thereby concluding the liminal state but also feeling a relapse.

With his photography mixed media compositions he unifies and mixes very different places, times of the year and weather conditions. He constructs intimate utopias and heterotopias where more than one space and condition are superimposed into a single one, creating novel unreal imaginary travels and dreamlike sensations that are influenced by the environment. On the material level, this creates very interesting textures and effects. On the conceptual level, this creates protection but also determinism. He shows places and objects important to him that symbolise liminality as, for instance, crossroads, doors or a moving train for their ephemeral character, for not being determinate places but being between places, also indicating their relations to decisions one takes.

 

 

O poeta é um fingidor.                                    

Finge tão completamente

Que chega a fingir que é dor

A dor que deveras sente.

E os que lêem o que escreve,

Na dor lida sentem bem,

Não as duas que ele teve,

Mas só a que eles não têm.

E assim nas calhas da roda

Gira, a entreter a razão,

Esse comboio de corda

Que se chama coração.

 

Fernando Pessoa (1930), Autopsychography (translation: Richard Zenith)