Vigo Gallery
PRESS RELEASE Vigo Gallery 22 Old Bond Street London W1S 4PY 0207 491 1485 [email protected]
Biggs & Collings: The Whole Earth
13 January – 10 February 2012
Highly acclaimed collaborative artists Emma Biggs and Matthew Collings are internationally renowned for their works on canvas and in mosaic. Opening on 13 January 2012 at Vigo Gallery, the artists will show a selection of innovative large-scale paintings. Deliberately choosing to promote abstract values, their work reveals a deep understanding of modern and pre-modern art. It connects to the physical, sensual world. They believe colour and form in painting can produce a structural space that is like observable reality. Instead of depicting recognizable objects they use colour, pattern and repetition to create complex images that seem truthful about the sensation of seeing. In this exhibition, Emma Biggs and Matthew Collings present their most important artistic statement to date, with eight major new pieces which amount to a virtual manifesto of their art.
Emma Biggs studied Fine Art at Leeds University in the late 1970s. She has worked as a mosaic artist for almost thirty years, setting up Mosaic Workshop in the 1980s; a craft-based mosaic company. Her practice has an aesthetic sensibility whose aims and ideals connect to those of William Morris and the Bauhaus, and is informed by her study of historical mosaics. The mosaic tradition she works out of begins in Babylon, encompasses Roman and Byzantine art, and is renewed with early modernism. She is currently writing a book on this history and has written many others. Her clients are wide-ranging in scope, and include a Prime Minister, a Sultan and many pop stars. She has worked in cathedrals and mosques, in the UK and abroad. She is Senior Tutor in mosaic at West Dean College.
Matthew Collings studied painting in the 1970s at the Byam Shaw art school. On leaving art school in 1978 he began writing reviews for the UK based magazine Artscribe. In the 1980s and 90s, after taking over the editorship of Artscribe, and turning it into a successful international publication, he was the art critic on BBC2's The Late Show. He has written many books on art, including Blimey! From Bohemia to Britpop: The London Artworld from Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst and This Is Modern Art. From the 90s into the 2000s he wrote and presented the Channel 4 TV series This Is Modern Art, which won many awards including a BAFTA. Subsequent Channel 4 projects included Hello Culture and Impressionism: Revenge of the Nice. His recent programmes What Is Beauty and Renaissance Revolution were made for the BBC. For many years he presented Channel 4's live annual coverage of the Turner Prize, and last year he returned to that task when the event took place at the Baltic Gallery in Newcastle. Throughout this period he kept up his practice as a painter. Since completing an MA at Goldsmith's in 1992 he has taken part in many exhibitions. He began collaborating with Emma Biggs in 2001.
Vigo Gallery is a contemporary art company founded in September 2011 by Thomas Williams, and former FAS Contemporary director, Toby Clarke. Recent exhibitors include Gavin Turk, Leonardo Drew and Oliver Marsden. In 2012 Vigo Gallery will present a series of innovative group shows, in particular showcasing artists such as Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Diebenkorn in California! : Bay Area Artists from the 1960s and 70s, as well as displaying the works of Jason Martin and Lucio Fontana alongside each other for the first time. In July they will host an innovative exhibition of work by the contributing artists to Peter Jones and Marcus Harvey’s ‘Turps Banana’ magazine.
For further press information please contact Charlotte Sanguinetti on 020 7491 1485 or email [email protected]
Listings information
Vigo Gallery, 22 Old Bond Street, London, W1S 4PY +44 (0) 20 7491 1485 [email protected] www.vigogallery.com Gallery hours: 10am - 6pm, Monday - Friday. Saturday by appointment.
Above: Biggs & Collings, A Flaming Sword, 2011, oil on canvas, 80 x 80 in.