A collaborative art project between myself and contemporary painter Sean Williams, 'Take the Long Way Home' is a small scale exhibition as part of the 'Beyond Scale' art project by artist Hondartza Fraga. An art gallery the size of a dolls’ house (approximately 42cm wide, 46cm tall and 30cm deep), Hondartza created the miniature gallery as a response to the COVID-19 lockdown, the closure of galleries and the inability to view art in person.
'Take the Long Way Home' by Sean Williams and David Riley
An exhibition of painting and sculpture that can be seen as a metaphorical journey around a city and through life. This emerged from a series of discussions around each other’s contrasting practices, the possibility of making visual and thematic connections and the freedoms and constraints of working at small scale.
Williams presents scenes that could be points along a journey, albeit at different times of day and year, inspired by walks between home and studio, a fertile process for generating ideas and distilling thoughts. Riley responds in sculptural form by taking similar scenes and removing the context, leaving the figures to act out mundane tasks. The home is shown as an ideal for which the workers strive to achieve.
Paintings by Sean Williams - acrylic on styrene.
For more of Sean's work please visit https://swseanwilliams.wordpress.com/
By presenting at small scale within a miniature gallery, the paintings and sculpture can be seen both as miniaturized versions of potential full scale works and as pieces created at their intended scale to fit a particular space. By connecting both artists’ work through a series of visual motifs (e.g. ladders, wheelbarrows, spilt paint can), the viewer is invited to see both a series of separate curated artworks within a miniature gallery space, and one installation with a specific theme.
Beyond Scale art project: https://beyondscale.wordpress.com/
Hondartza Fraga, artist: https://www.hondartzafraga.com/
Sean Williams, artist: https://swseanwilliams.wordpress.com/