Marja Bonada: Pendulum Paintings
Preview Friday 12th August 2016 – 7pm
Exhibition continues until 27th August
Open Wednesday – Saturday 12 – 5pm
Admission Free
The work in this exhibition is an experiment in attempting to find a way to visualise the energy of the Earth; to prove that it exists.
Bonada, during making the paintings came to realise that energy is present in so many forms, and the bigger picture became simultaneously impossibly complicated and elegantly simple. According to Einstein’s theory that any object that possesses mass, it also possesses energy in a corresponding amount, E = mc2 states that Energy = Mass x the Speed of light squared. Therefore Earth must possess an unfathomable amount of energy.
In many ways making these paintings has also been a scientific experiment.
‘I have often been astonished at the results, and how much they vary on different days, even though all the elements of the “experiment” have stayed as similar as possible.
The role of the artist becomes purposely minimal as the apparatus is set up and the pendulum creates spontaneous paintings that illustrate harmony and disorder. The pendulum can suddenly behave so differently and make the marks you see on the paper, but what causes the variation is sometimes hard to define and predict. The marks vary from repeating in a precise geometric pattern to an unruly scrawl.
I would like to write a conclusion to the experiment, but I feel that making this work was like opening a huge book, and I have just finished the first page’.
Marja Bonada is a Wrexham based visual artist working with different media and is inspired by and often tries to find new ways of looking at nature.
Marja graduated from Wolverhampton University in 2010, after studying M.A. Fine Art. Since then she has been working in Wrexham, and has been involved with THIS Project, and the local community arts scene, working at Galeri 3B and Undegun as curator and exhibition organiser.
In 2012 she instigated an exchange programme with Finnish artist Maija Helasvuo. The programme every year takes a group of Wales based artists to Finland whilst bringing a Finnish group to Wrexham. This year a group of North Wales based artists exhibited in Berlin at the Finnish/German gallery in Wedding area, as part of the exchange project. There are plans to extend the programme further across Wales.
This exhibition is a part of this year’s Beep Wales International Painting Prize programme of events taking place in Swansea, Wrexham & Cardiff throughout 2016
www.beepwales.co.uk
