23 March – 22 May 2022
Debby’s inspiration comes from diverse sources: textiles from India, often made by women, musical rhythms and the textures and colours of the countryside in the Eden Valley. Gary is a visual artist based in Sockbridge, near Penrith where he has a studio. He works in a variety of media, focusing on sculpture.
Debby Akam studied Fine Art at the Universities of Edinburgh, Northumbria and Sunderland. She has been based in Cumbria since 1999. Recently, and especially during lockdown, she has been concentrating on painting and printmaking.
In 2020 Debby undertook an artist’s residency at Tasara Textile Centre in Beypore, India, where she began to work on a new body of work. These paintings are investigations of layered space through colour relationships that result in representations of stilled action or vitality. They suggest the possibility of colour being a language in itself, working as a corellative for emotions: pointing to meanings without illustrating them.
Inspiration comes from diverse sources: textiles and temporary wall decorations from India, often made by women, musical rhythms and the textures and colours of the countryside in the Eden Valley. The paintings are about being in the moment: going back to Debby’s childhood in Borneo,and forward into the unknown all at once, and making paintings where memory, experience and imagination can coalesce.
Find out more about Debby on her website http://www.debbyakam.com/
Gary Power is a visual artist based in Sockbridge, near Penrith where he has a studio. He works in a variety of media, focusing on sculpture.
In part one of ‘Thinking Through Colour and Form’, Gary is showing two ‘Solar’, made with laminated curved and painted wooden strips using a traditional craft aesthetic. The work is intended to convey a range of flowing biomorphic forms with a sense of mutability, movement, celebrating energy and change. There will also be an opportunity to see ‘Escapade’, from the ‘Tintotem Parade’ series, a group of sculptures to be shown next year more fully as an installation in 2022 in part 2 of the exhibition. These are made of stacks of upcycled discarded tins and transformed everyday objects such as teapots, toy soldiers, figurines, bowls, or distorted watering cans. These form an alternative collection of monuments suggesting what objects and symbols we may now share, revere, fear, or contemplate.
