Martina Schmuecker

Martina Schmuecker makes sculptures in the widest sense of the word. Using herself as well as directing actors in her work, she creates visually stunning images that remind us of the tableaux vivant. The performances are moments of still reflection on a sculptural image, using elements of architecture and furniture as props as well as playing with well-known images from art history. Her current research concerns the relationship between what is seen, what is remembered, and how this memory changes in time; resulting in the theatre play Feedback Room. The play was realised during a residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, in 2010. Recent exhibitions include Visual Mechanics, Malta Contemporary, Valletta, 2009; Beyond the Pale Yellow Amusementpark, Campbell Works, London, 2008; The Problem of Error, Gallery Sassa Truelzsch, Berlin, 2008; Glimpse Gallery KraskaEckstein, Bremen; Chateau Ivre, Schloss Sacrow, Potsdam; Contained, Hiscox Art Projects, London 2007 and New Contemporaries, London, 2005.

Studio: The Fourth Floor

Website: http://martinaschmuecker.wordpress.com/

Colin McMaster - Artist

Website: http://colinmcmaster.co.uk/

Studio: The Fourth Floor

“I paint stereotypes rather than individuals, meshing references from the photographic storyboards of romantic comics and their heightened sense of melodrama, with the more sinister undertones of American film noir and pulp crime novels.

The subjects are superficially attractive but there is an underlying sense of their narcissism and perhaps even their engagement in acts which the viewer is compelled to interpret as illicit. As a result, the viewer is cast as a voyeur, the perception of what’s taking place in the paintings suspended in a double take, in an ambivalence between observation and accusation.

Stylistically, the work owes much to the Pop Art movement. The smoothness of the picture surface and the mannequin-like quality of the figures heightens the feeling of artifice and blurs our sense of looking at a painted image.”

Jo Dennis - Artist

Website: http://www.jo-dennis.co.uk/

Studio: The Fourth Floor