Trans_Formations I: Ramsgate

The gallery aims to create a curatorial space in constant motion, a seamless flux of art reclaiming the bay windowed open space known in Ramsgate as the Vinyl Head Gallery. There will be a succession of interweaving displays, crossovers, and experiments in the confines of the gallery, while a series of spotlights on artists and their practices will be published on a regular basis on our online gallery platform.

While many disciplines are represented throughout the program, the gallery also focuses on artists’ designs, namely, design issued and derived from the practice of fine art. Artists will at certain times exhibit functional objects produced in parallel with their corpus of works. The other and perhaps ultimate aim of the gallery is to offer greater access to excellent artworks by including a wider public of true art fans. In close collaboration with the artists, we produce high quality limited editions which allow affordable prices for iconic works.

Trans_Formations refers to the process of art in many of its manifestations. Steven Geddes in porcelain and Duncan Cheetham in stoneware, have turned, shaped, and glazed sculptural and functional forms before exposing clay to extreme high temperature. Claire Pestaille has made collages by destroying the source image and repositioning it into another. From the combined result they are then turned into high-quality larger high tech pigment inkjets images, as with Stephen Brandes from painted gouaches on a 1950’s French office paper, and Michael Stubbs from abstract collages compositions. The word ‘print’ also applies to a quite different practice and can be an unrepeatable process as Katrina Blannin with her handmade ink monotypes. Whilst Bérénice Mayaux and Richard Caldicott link the theme together with paint and mixed media on paper.

As far as time goes, all these techniques have been practiced for thousands of years, and yet none of these forms would have existed before. As we are approaching the most transformative of futures (for better or for worst), and coming out of a pandemic that has re-established some stark reminder of human history, Trans_Formations I is not only about process, but about ways of living. Although all the artists represented have an active international career, the aim of the new gallery in Ramsgate is to focus on how possible it is to simultaneously be international and local, how capital cities are not the only centre since the centre is everywhere, and since interconnectivity is our future.