ERNESTO CANOVAS & NADINE MAHONEY

NORTH HOUSE GALLERY is delighted to present two young painters who completed their Masters in Fine Art at the Slade in 2011. With very different subject matter and materials, both explore the notion of Trace or Memory, building up the image from layers.

ERNESTO CANOVAS
Born in Spain, Ernesto Canovas trained in Barcelona and worked as a graphic designer before taking a degree in Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh School of Art. Since graduating from the Slade last summer he has already been selected for the Saatchi Gallery and Channel 4’s New Sensations exhibition and Plan B at the Two Window Project in Berlin.

Canovas' high-gloss mixed media pieces are inspired by pop-cultural images from recent history and contemporary life. They range from dramatic explosions to serene landscapes. He gathers pictures from vintage photographs and electronic media, which he then applies on to wood. He relies on the pattern of fibres in the wood, working with the grain to discover and suggest rhythms and echoes. Painted bright, abstract shapes reinforce this sensation of dynamic movement. His multi-layered approach lends perceptual depth and emotional moodiness to his work which has been shown in Germany, London, Scotland and the USA.

NADINE MAHONEY
Mahoney's portraits depict hybrid forms that are both figurative and abstract. Her fundamental use of portraiture explores an interest in what the figure represents in terms of memory, personal connection and sense of belonging. Using art historical portraits as a reference, she dissolves the figure to create a vehicle that carries painterly gesture. Each painting offers a new possibility, differing in scale, size, mark and surface. Working intuitively, her response to the material achieves diverse results: some paintings have a sense of the figure being scrubbed or washed out, while others appear to show a form that is playfully found.

Nadine Mahoney, born 1981 in London, lives and works in London. She studied MFA Fine Art at Slade School of Fine Art, UCL and BA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art & Design. Selected group exhibitions include: Crash Open, Charlie Dutton Gallery, Found: Kettle’s Yard Pop Up Shop, The Brompton Garage, London, 2011; Moreover, Strang Print Room, UCL, London, 2011; The Marmite Prize for Painting, The Nunnery Gallery, London, 2011. She was a finalist for Threadneedle Prize 2011. Her work is in public and private collections in the UK and USA.