You Are the Dance

Studio 1.1

5 October - 22 October

Brooks and Raffell via dyslexic contortion explore memory and its impact upon self-identity. Memories are blurred, the work layered with meaning, drawing on Traveller and Romany influences, using traditional methods to far from traditional ends. To ‘draw the viewer in with colour and shock with the difficult imagery,’ as Roma artist Delaine La Bas says,
“Our work picks up on naïve styles, folk art and outsider art. We met at art school and began to develop our collaborative approaches from there. We were Insiders only by default, and felt we were never completely truly inside.
Our parallel memories act as a counterpoint, allowing us to reach deeper into their power and how they affect mental health. Memories shared of both growing up with mothers with bipolar disorder. Our work is a vision from the survivor’s point of view, non-judgmental, healing and empathetic.
Using our own experiences of a memory, warped by time, the art transcends the autobiographical to a state of otherness. We know the reality, but a veil is drawn over the whole”.
There’s collage, there’s clutter, and above all there’s colour. Familiar though each element in their fabrications might be, snatching it out of real life and (let’s be frank) distorting and degrading it, Raffell and Brooks remind us that the surreal must always lift us up and beyond mere life.