Polarcap presents VEGETABLE LOVES

WEST BARNS STUDIOS, School Brae, West Barns, Dunbar, East Lothian EH49 1UD

29TH JANUARY – 13TH FEBRUARY

12 – 5PM THURSDAY – SUNDAY

OR BY APPOINTMENT 01368 860 963

Following the success of critically acclaimed :

Polarcap is pleased to announce the opening of its fifth exhibition, Vegetable Loves.

The exhibition brings together artists Keith Farquhar, Derrick Guild, Soland Goose, Rania Ho, Jacqui Irvine, Jonathan Owen and Hayley Tompkins.

The artists were asked to make a response to the line from Andrew Marvell’s metaphysical poem To His Coy Mistress:

My vegetable love should grow,

Vaster than empires and more slow”

The artists were left to make an open interpretation of this enigmatic phrase with its implications of life, growth and love on a slow and persistent level that ultimately outlives the human lifespan along with ideas of growth, decay and regeneration.

Jonathan Owen -“ I’m thinking about Vegetable Loves in terms of slowness; collapse rather than growth – the idea that the point at which your body stops growing is the point at which it begins to die. The same careful process used to create them is used to cause their slow deterioration” talking of his intimate carved wooden sculptures in the show.

Rania Ho of The Arrowfactory, shows’ nature studies’ of topiary prepared in advance of the Beijing Olympics projecting a kind of ‘vegetable utopianism’ onto the screen in conjunction with her home made, improvised ‘water features’.

Keith Farquhar takes a pragmatic view” Vegetable Loves conjures the idea of a relationship with vegetables. This makes me think of cookery and the relationships between food on a plate” His work “English Food” takes its name from the classic cookery book by Jane Grigson, first published in 1974.

The exhibition is to be held in West Barns Studios in West Barns, Dunbar and marks a return to home base for Polarcap after recent shows in Musselburgh [Eskimo 2008] and Edinburgh [Heavy Metal Mouth 2009]

As in previous Polarcap shows artists are drawn from a diverse pool of ages and experience: from current ECA student Jacqui Irvine to established artists such as Hayley Tompkins, Keith Farquhar, Jon Owen and Derrick Guild and from Beijing’s Rania Ho to Dunbar duo Soland Goose.

Polarcap are Dunbar based artists Graeme Todd and Liz Adamson and they run contemporary art projects from various venues with a view to enlarging the contemporary art audience to out of town venues as well as in the city.