March 26th – May 1st, 2016
Opening, March 26th, 5 – 8pm
Space Ship Earth - Accept what you Destroy, Oil on linen, 100cm x 100cm, 2015, £ 1,500
Adjacent - Machina Trancendentalis, Oil on canvas, 58cm x 64cm, 2015, £ 950
Oblique Cartographies – Opening the Gates, Oil on Fabriano Tela oil paper, 110cm x 75cm , 2015, £ 1250
Oblique Cartographies – There is Hope Here, Oil on Fabriano Tela oil paper, 110cm x 75cm , 2015, £ 1250
Planet A, Laser engraving, oil and screen-print on canvas, 50cm x 50cm, edition of 3, 2014, £350
Soul Chart III, Woodcut print on paper, 37cm x 37cm, edition of10, 2015, £ 195 (unframed), £ 250 (framed)
Space Ship Earth Lost in Falling Light, Oil on linen, 100cm x 100cm, 2015, £1500
Adjacent - Beyond this Moment, Oil on linen, 58cm x 64cm, 2014, £950
Space Ship Earth - Turn the Summer into Dust, Oil on canvas, 100cm x 100cm, 2013, £1500
Adjacent - Everything You Ever Wanted, Oil on canvas, 90cm x 110cm, 2015, £2750
Exhibition Information
Tarpey Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of new and recent paintings, maps and woodcut prints by Wirksworth based artist Geoff Diego Litherland.
Geoff Diego Litherland draws us into a future of both hope and anxiety. Weaving together disparate cultural references into portraits, maps and landscapes, he creates an overarching narrative, an invitation to journey into the unknown as explorers of what might be. In these works of fluid beauty and technical bravado Litherland constructs the future from the past, fiction from fact. He sends us out into the stars as settlers of new worlds, where in the face of impending environmental disaster we can start again.
These paintings are not only held together by their underlying narrative of future hope, they are also united through Litherland’s exuberant delight in the possibilities of paint. Like the worlds he portrays that are pregnant with possibility, these paintings reveal paint as a vibrant medium, full of dynamic potential. As abstract marks coalesce into figurative forms before falling away again into luscious layers glinting with light, Litherland gives the viewer an invitation. Come and follow – the future awaits.
Text by Richard Davey
The exhibition will include recent landscape, portrait and octagonal paintings on linen, maps and smaller field studies which are oil on paper as well as recent woodcut prints.
About the Artist
Geoff Diego Litherland is a Mexican born artist based in Nottingham. Having spent his early years in Bolivia and Ecuador he moved to England and graduated from Falmouth College of Arts in 2002 with a first class honours degree in Fine Art Painting.
He has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally. Recognition to date has included winning the Saatchi Online Surreal Showdown in 2012, being awarded the prestigious Warden’s Purchase prize from Goldmsiiths; being selected for the John Moores 25 Painting prize at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool and winning the Nottingham Castle Open in 2008.
Artist Statement
Geoff is currently an Associate Lecturer in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University and has just completed an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University of London.
Geoff’s work explores the tension between the natural world and its grasping appropriation by human influence. It draws from traditional genres of painting together with the rusty surrealism of science fiction and the fantasia of abstraction to create a parallel world that seeks to not only question our perception of and relationship to nature, but paintings’ historical and current role in that.
Selected Past Exhibitions
2014
The London Art Fair, showing with Bearspace, London
2013
Refresh, Bearspace London
We Were Never Here, (solo exhibition) Bearspace, London
Buy Art Fair, Antlers Gallery, Manchester
Spatial, Antlers Gallery, Bristol
Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London
Camaradas, collaboration with Lauren O’Grady, Mexican Embassy, London
We Will Say Goodbye to Everything (solo exhibition) Nancy Victor Gallery, London
Burning Bright, Saatchi Online Artists, Hyatt Hotel London
The London Art Fair, showing with Bearspace, London
An Undelivered Postcard from the Edge of the World, Affordable Art Fair, London.
Out of This World Part 1, Syson Gallery, Nottingham
2012
The Aftermath, Bearspace, London Nov 2012
Flatland, Blyth Gallery, London, Nov 2012
Tarpey Gallery, Castle Donnington (Joint Show with Thomas Wright)
Oriel Davis Open, Newtown, Wales,
Watergate Gallery, (solo exhibition), Hay Festival,
MA Show, Goldsmiths, London
Cluster II, SW1 Gallery, London
Be Real, Hamni Gallery, London,
Preposterous, La Scatola Gallery, London,
Diamond Armour Article Gallery, Birmingham,
2011
Collisions, Art Work Space Gallery, London (solo show)
Salon Art Prize, Vyner Street London, October
Nottingham Castle Open, October 2011
Colour in Art, Beldam Gallery, Uxbridge (selected group show)
The Bookmark Project, Nottingham Contemporary
MA Interim Show, Goldsmiths College
Open 23, New Walk Museum, Leicester, (nominated for the Attenborough Prize)
2010
Crash, Charlie Dutton Gallery, London (selected group show)
Relay, Core Gallery, Deptford, London
Closely Held Secrets, Bonington Gallery, Nottingham
Race for the Prize, Tether, Nottongham
Deptford X, CBA Open Studios, Deptford, London
Group Exhibition, Tarpey Gallery, Castle Donington
A Moment before Decadence, CoExist, Southend
Group exhibition, Hart Gallery, London
Nottingham Castle Open, Nottingham Castle Galleries (selected group show)