Alexis Soul-Gray & Hannah Wooll - What Was Lost

Exhibition dates: 24 September – 29  October 2022
Private View: Friday 23 September 2022, 6-9pm

Alexis Soul-Gray and Hannah Wooll both work with/against found paper images, intuitively reworking, adding, deleting and highlighting what was there before. Previously benign, saccharine, kitsch, or outmoded images are given new life, given agency, are subverted and re charged. What Was Lost brings together the two artists, both fans of each other’s work, to highlight their shared interests through work on paper.
Alexis Soul-Gray’s works speculatively question ideas of nostalgia and commemoration, bringing together a conjecture of imagery taken from public archival materials. Through painting, collage, assemblage and printmaking, she explores ideas of nurture, dereliction and the mother archetype in relation to trauma. Using appropriation, detournement and the re-ordering of paper ephemera and found objects, Soul-Gray explores the fluid nature of recall, allowing intuition to lead the work through various states of exploration until reaching a final resting place. Images are continuously intersecting, abrasive, harmonious, removed. The saccharin and the abject sit in a purposefully contradictory language.
Hannah Wooll explores the domestic space, interior life and the value associated with related objects and artworks. As an artist working from a home studio, Wooll is fascinated by the value given to objects and images associated with this interior life. Her current practise utilises found media, locally sourced from charity shops. She is particularly drawn to old books and cheap ceramic vases -- mass produced objects envisioned to decorate, populate and personalise one’s home, yet now discarded and forgotten on these shelves, hoping for a new owner. The women that sparsely populate Wooll’s paintings appear sometimes insouciant, untroubled by their unfamiliar or unnatural surroundings, at other times awkward in the environments which they have been placed, but always exist with a nod not only to the style and era of the book, but also to the women that have poured over these home craft books over the years. Wooll often regard her works as being a still from a story or film, caught up in a moment, the image paused; sometimes melodramatic, sometimes fragments of quiet and uneasy tension.
Installation Views
Artworks

Hannah Wooll
Bathers
acrylic ink on book page,
27 x 21cm
2022

Hannah Wooll
Hot House
acrylic ink on book page,
19 x 13cm
2022

Hannah Wooll
Over my Shoulder
acrylic ink on book page,
27x21cm
2020

Hannah Wooll
Dresser
acrylic ink on book page,
21x16cm
2020

Hannah Wooll
Fleeting
acrylic ink on book page,
32 x 22cm
2020

Hannah Wooll
Plumage
acrylic ink on book page,
23 x 21cm
2022

Hannah Wooll
Slip
acrylic and acrylic ink on metallic card,
29 x 21cm
2021

Hannah Wooll
Springtime, I Need You More Than Ever
acrylic ink and collage on book page,
30 x 22cm
2020

Hannah Wooll
The Night is Coming In
ink on book page,
32 x 22cm
2022

Hannah Wooll
Variegated
Acrylic and acrylic ink on found image
25 x 20cm
2019

Hannah Wooll
Pinnacle
Paper clay, acrylic ink on found ceramic,
40 x 23 x 23cm approx,
2022
SOLD

Hannah Wooll
Us
Acrylic ink on paper clay,
30 x 22cm
2022

Hannah Wooll
Watcher
Acrylic ink on paper clay,
25 x 17cm
2022

Hannah Wooll
Like A Fish Out Of Water
Paper clay, porcelain paint, acrylic ink on found ceramic,
20x9x4cm approx.
2022
Hannah Wooll
Old Hunstanton Beach
Paper clay, porcelain paint,& acrylic ink
14x10x10cm approx.
2022
Hannah Wooll
September Is Here Again
Paper clay and acrylic ink and medium,
24x15cm approx.
2022

Hannah Wooll
Faded
Paper clay and acrylic ink and medium,
22x19cm approx.
2022

Hannah Wooll
Blue
Paper clay, porcelain paint, acrylic ink, on found ceramic,
21x10x10cm
2022
SOLD

Hannah Wooll
Rainy Days and Mondays
Paper clay, porcelain paint, acrylic ink on found ceramic,
20x13x10cm approx.
2022
SOLD

Alexis Soul-Gray
Blue Cardi
Oil on Paper
24 x 18cm
2021

Alexis Soul-Gray
Babykin
Oil on Paper
24 x 18cm
2021

Alexis Soul-Gray
Push Up Toy
Oil on Paper
24 x 18cm
2021

Alexis Soul-Gray
Rainbow
Oil on Paper
24 x 18cm
2021

Alexis Soul-Gray
Love Me
Oil on Paper
24 x 18cm
2021

Alexis Soul-Gray
At the Fair
Oil on Paper
24 x 18cm
2021

Alexis Soul-Gray
Pet Rabbit
Oil on Paper
24 x 18cm
2021

Alexis Soul-Gray
Red Tights
Oil on Paper
24 x 18cm
2021

Alexis Soul-Gray
Singing Baby
Oil on Paper
24 x 18cm
2021

Alexis Soul-Gray
Sunbeam
Oil on Paper
24 x 18cm
2021

About Alexis Soul-Gray

Alexis Soul-Gray (b.1980), lives and works in Devon and is currently studying MA Painting at The Royal College of art. She is alumni of The Royal Drawing school having completed the Postgraduate Drawing Year between 2006-7, her undergraduate degree is in Drawing from Camberwell College of Art, graduating in 2003 after completing a foundation course at Central Saint Martins College of Art. Alexis has held lecturing positions in universities, worked as an independent curator and is a 2021and 2022 recipient of The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for Painting and Drawing. She has recently been artist in residence at Exeter Phoenix Gallery and is currently working towards her first international solo shows.

About Hannah Wooll

Hannah Wooll lives and works in the North West. She completed a BA (Fine Art) at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2000 and studied at The Royal Academy from 2000-03 where she received the May Cristea Award for Fine Art. Selected exhibitions include: Natural Habitat, The 12 Gallery, (2010); Artist First, Paper Only at Francis Boeske Projects, Amsterdam, (2017); Portfolio North West, The Bluecoat, Liverpool, (2013); The Creekside Open (2013); Polemically Small, Torrance Art Museum, USA (2011); Beyond Fontanna, Studio 1:1 Gallery, London, (2010,) Jerwood Drawing Prize (2009) and (2010); The Future Can Wait, Truman Brewery, London, (2007); New London Kicks, Wooster Projects New York, (2005).