ZARA MATTHEWS
CHAMBRE

16 September – 21 October 2011

Chambre is Zara Matthews fifth solo exhibition with the Eagle Gallery and presents a portrait of a room through an installation of paintings. The exhibition follows Matthews’ first ‘room portrait’, which was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2009 when she was selected as one of the exhibitors in East End Academy – The Painting Edition.

The recreation of the light and atmosphere of the bedroom of a converted chapel in the north of France, comments upon the relationship between painting and photography. The room acts as a metaphor for the way that light floods into a camera and is captured and locked in time, as an image.
The paintings were initiated from a series of photographs made in the room. Having gone to sleep in the dark Matthews awoke to the content and details of the space revealed in the early morning. The artist’s eye roams the walls, furniture and corners, dwelling longer than expected on the small details revealed. The process of painting the images introduces a different element of time and these haunting and evocative fragments speak of desire and memory in their recreation of place.

Zara Matthews trained at Goldsmiths College, London, Kingston Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art, London.
In 1991 she was selected by Eileen Agar in a Flowers East Artist of the Day exhibition and has subsequently shown in solo exhibitions in Europe and the UK. In 2003 she collaborated with the composer Tansy Davies to produce the film and music performance Genome, commissioned by the Progress Educational and supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Elephant Trust, the Moose Foundation and the Holst Foundation.

Catalogue available with text by Sue Hubbard

For further details or a catalogue, please contact the Eagle Gallery on 020 7833 2674 or email: emmahilleagle@aol.com

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