Marksman Gallery - Mandy Ure

Mandy Ure’s paintings offer an immediate sense of recognition. Reassuringly self-evident and easy to name things – a head, a cactus, a giraffe – are presented flattened, deadpan. Acknowledgment comes with surprise as clues to the way the paintings are made is evidenced. Constructed from many hundreds of carefully, individually applied brush-marks that seem to swarm over, in and around the image, the paintings appear active rather than descriptive. As the eye scans and adjusts to the optically confusing surface and the exhausting push-pull effect of the material structure against the image, an idea occurs that the intention of the artist – and by implication that of the viewer – is simply to extend time.

In 2003 Mandy Ure’s work was shown in scenery at Richard Salmon Gallery, London; Santa Maria del Soccorso, 50th Venice Biennale; Mandy Ure Holly Snapp Gallery, Venice; Nightwood Rhodes+Mann Gallery, London. Her work was also included in Painting: London at Holly Snapp Gallery, Venice Biennale in 2005. Exhibitions in 2006 include Picnic Area (dumb interior) Room, Bristol and Altered Beast Three Colt’s Lane, London.