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Selected Group Exhibitions

Rye Society of Artists Spring Exhibition. Rye Art Gallery 2024

Winter Group Show. Linden Hall Studio, Deal, UK 2023/4

Abundance. Rye Art Gallery, Rye, UK 2023/4

Chapelle Saint André de Sévanes, Conneaux, France 2021

Quatre Voyageuses. La Glaneuserie Galerie, France 2021

Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize. Longlisted 2021

Hastings Open. Hastings Museum 2020

Ryebank Gallery 2020

Drawing Now. Rye Art Gallery 2019

Jackson’s Open Painting Prize. Longlisted 2019

Common Ground. Rye Art Gallery 2018

Jackson’s Open Painting Prize. Shortlisted 2018

Affordable Art Fair London 2018

Stable Studios @ Graze, St Leonards on Sea 2017

SKETCH2017 The Rabley Drawing Prize. UK tour 2017

SoCo Showcase, Artsforum, St Leonards on Sea 2016

Rye Society of Artists Summer Exhibition, Rye 2015

The John Ruskin Prize , Millenium Gallery, Sheffield Trinity Buoy Wharf, London 2014

Rye Society of Artists Summer Exhibition, Rye, 2014

Winter Mix, First Sight Gallery, Hastings 2013

Open Studios, The Stables Studios, Fairlight, Hastings 2013

Garden in the Garage, Hastings 2013

Rye Society of Artists Summer Exhibition, Rye 2013

Open Studios, The School Creative Centre, Rye 2011,2012

 The Lie of the Land SoCo Hastings 2011

Openings SoCo Hastings 2011

End of Year Show SoCo Hastings 2010

Inhabited Space SoCo Hastings 2009

Secret Postcard Show SoCo Hastings 2008

1980 – 2000 Blackheath Gallery London Mall Galleries London New South Wales Gallery Sydney Australia Gold Coast City Art Gallery Australia

Solo Exhibitions and Installations Drawings, First Sight Gallery, Hastings 2013

A Garden Enclosed, Installation, The School, Rye, 2013

Smiths Gallery London Museum Quilts Gallery London

Gallery Up Top Rockhampton Australia

Education MLA (MA Landscape Architecture) University of Greenwich 2004 BA Hons. Open University 2000 BA Fine Art Painting Brighton College of Art 1974 Foundation Shrewsbury School of Art 1970

 

The intensity of Anny Evason’s work is informed by her deep connection to and concern for the natural world, but also by considered intellectual concepts. Huge, sometimes two metres long, charcoal drawings pulse with energy and movement. When these are hung in staggered spaces, as at Rye Creative Centre,( “A Garden Enclosed”), the disruption of the usual static gallery space allows for the unexpected, for wonder and alarm, and prepares for a show which stimulates questions about our relationship with nature. Even individually, the drawings have a way of pulling us into a place of magical narrative by her use of a lyrical, subtle palette and the sheer violence of the calligraphic style of abstraction. It’s the violence of life, of energy, not of brutality. The mark making is extremely sensitive. Her drawing based on the sonogram of a nightingale refers to ideas about the development of language from bird song which is more fully explored in her “Learning French” drawings.

She is very drawn to the wilder landscape of southern France, fascinated by the shadows cast by the forests of holm oaks and by the earthy tones of the ochre quarries among the pine woods. From the winter fragments of vines still clinging to their wires, she creates a rich metaphor for different kinds of language – verbal, visual, auditory, physical: the shapes have a theatrical vitality reminiscent of the language of motion in dance, of birds in flight, or of musical notation; of the way we might experience a new language or create one of our own from a tangle of sounds imitating bird-song. These are the “Learning French” drawings.

At the Pont du Gard near Nimes, she finds the Roman stones from the aqueduct which are unseen by tourists. Their tumbled forms find a way into her concertina book of paintings of the forest, inspired by her favourite walk rich with olive trees. Her palette of rich ochres, lucent greens and range of dark monochrome tones, takes us to its heady scents and deep absorption in the presence of the natural world.

Another kind of detritus appeals to her at Dungeness with its pylons and sheds, its huge concrete sound mirrors, whose purpose of detecting German planes became obsolete as their construction was completed. This symbol of an early warning system which was overtaken before it became of use is a warning for us to listen to what is happening to our environment before it’s too late.

Two of the drawings were selected for the Ruskin drawing prize and she has been shortlisted for the Rabley Sketchbook Open show.

Simone Witney
Features Editor HIP
https://ulyssesdove.wordpress.com/