BARBARA BEYER...what it is

BARBARA BEYER:‘... what it is’

North House Gallery is delighted to present this exhibition of sculpture and drawings by the energetic London based artist Barbara Beyer. Since her first show here in early 2022, entitled unterwegs, she has produced a large, varied, yet coherent, body of work through her unconventional experiments with materials and making.

From the man and mountain series in adobe and slate (above left) and from the many sketches and maquettes of loaded boat shapes, a response to global events in 2020, evolved the large capacity boat series (centre). “Capacity (2023) evokes the dynamic of boats but the material elements and construction method recall the sturdiness of houses and solid ground.

The give and take series of blue cubes evolved out of making and disrupting works in stoneware, drilling and cutting into forms and applying the extracted material elsewhere on the piece, dropping and otherwise interfering with them to make the history and resolution of the making apparent.

Orange stoneware vessels with gouged grooves and the extracted re-applied rods, both painted black, are similarly called cut and paste.

The reduction firing process required for stoneware happens to be right for making charcoal, the most basic of drawing materials. The burnt black twigs are beautiful in the vessels in which they were fired, the home made charcoal has been used in two series of large drawings, after walking on Dartmoor and one by one.

Smaller drawings of rudimentary dwellings in charcoal and clay complete the exhibition and look like a stepping stone to future work.