Leap Tide

'Leap Tide' is a collaboration between Oscar Peake and Amelia Rawlinson, who together forge an exhibition of bronze sculpture, embroidery, painting and photography - images undergoing transformation and trawling the unconscious. Both artists graduated from CGLAS in 2019 and have exhibited together at 54 The Gallery, Shepherd Market and at the Tabernacle. Working together in taking a hands on approach to the bronze casting process, the consideration of its historic techniques, materials and superstitions, has itself become a common thread.

Rooted in automatism, Oscar Peake sculpts wax into initially chaotic forms: morel shapes, ‘trypomorphs’, then develops pareidolias as they emerge, resulting in faces and figures ready to disintegrate into abstraction or vice versa. Mirrored in melting and casting the metal, dissolution and recoagulation reflect recognising and integrating shadow principles. Presented personified as portraits and sometimes as the heads of human figures in photo collage, they read like grotesques, unfamiliar but expressive, inviting the viewer to relate to unknowns in themselves.

Amelia Rawlinson’s process takes fragments and symbols from her previous artworks, recombines and reinterprets them, like the literary cut-up technique, into dense mindscapes. She is concerned with myth and ritual, how ongoing renewing and reworking can pour meaning into an empty vessel. The image of the many eyed mermaid becomes a Persephone, psychopomp figure, representing an impulse to visit the unknown beneath the sea, a canvas for unconscious projection.

The PV will take place on 17 April. Any enquires can be directed to: art@oscarpeake.com. Promotional images: sculptures by Oscar Peake and embroideries by Amelia Rawlinson.