JOHN CARTER, JULIA FARRER, NOEL FORSTER
Recent Work
8 September - 7 October 2005

The Eagle Gallery is delighted to bring together the work of three distinguished abstract artists John Carter, Julia Farrer and Noel Forster in an exhibition of wall based reliefs and paintings which were made in response to the invitation to show together.
The three artists have been friends for many years and have coincided in a number of group exhibitions but they have not until now had the opportunity to
exhibit their work in a more considered relationship and the result is a show full of subtle affinities and nuances.

Working to a simple parameter of a measurement (50 cms) to produce sequences of small scale related images, the artists’ individual voices are immediately apparent: Carter plays with the optical illusions of a parallelogram inset within the frame of a shallow square relief, while Farrer overlays and folds geometric shapes until they jut from the edges of their MDF supports and Forster underpins the light mesh of his brush strokes with an architectonic grid. Each of these artists is defined in some senses by their choice of limiting the parameters and each within their chosen approach plays skilfully with visual contradictions between figure and ground, surface and depth, manipulating what is read by the eye and perceived in the mind. Though the exhibition is not collaborative in a conventional sense the work shares a delicacy of approach towards colour and form and reveals connections in relation to the way each artist builds the image through an overlaying of shifting shape or mark.

The exhibition includes a number of graphic works, including a new set of woodcuts by Julia Farrer: Folded Variations, which is published for the show.