Visuals To Dance On 'MUSCLE MEMORY' Anna Liber Lewis x Four Tet
Words by Sabrina Garnier
‘Muscle Memory’ Curated by Becca Pelly-Fry at Elephant West is a joint art exhibition featuring series of paintings by Artist Anna Liber Lewis, winner of the Griffin Art Prize 2017 and 3 tracks composed by musician, Kieran Hebden, AKA Four Tet. A multi-sensory exhibition, that explores the emotional highs and lows of life; and fuses the works of two life long buddies.
‘Muscle Memory’ at Elephant West until 17 March
Hadal Fauna . Phonic Lips
2018 . 2018
Oil on canvas . Oil on canvas
200 x 150 cm . 220 x 170 cm Anna Liber Lewis
‘MUSCLE MEMORY’
Two artists, two different mediums, and shared strength to communicate personal experiences. Over a period of about 6 months, Hebden created three new tracks for the show, each made in response to the visuals by Liber Lewis was sending him.
“The drive is to make a painting, but meaning comes later” Anna Liber Lewis
Sirius Paralysis
2018
Mixed media on paper
30 x 21cm
The paintings and drawings by Liber Lewis are loaded emotional content, the colours and shapes palpitate outwards and tune together with movement. Abstraction of shapes and colours mimic movement and offer a sensational whirlwind of emotions on canvas.
Anna Liber Lewis Griffin Gallery 2017
Griffin Prize 2017 Winner
Curator Becca Pelly Fry says:
“Anna Liber Lewis won the Griffin Art Prize in 2017 (which I was Director of before moving to Elephant), and I’ve been working with her closely since then.
She’s an incredibly talented painter and I wanted to give her the opportunity to show how far she’s come in the past year, and to collaborate in a new and interesting way with an artist from a different discipline; it was Anna that brought Four Tet into the mix and it’s been an honour to witness the collaboration between them.”
Interview with Artist Anna Liber Lewis
AF: What instigated the creative fusion between your art, music & choreography?
Liber Lewis: “I had started listening to music in the car on the way to the studio and it was becoming a ritual to get me into a certain space to start a painting. I'd spend time finding the right music to help me tap into a drive I was chasing for the painting and I'd often dance before I started painting. I noticed how this helped locate me in my body. I'd feel the blood rush down to my fingers after spinning around or feel a driving force in my hips. I quite liked repetitive motions. So working with Kieran was a natural, organic development. I had been listening to a lot of his back catalogue. It just clicked when I ran the idea past him. Working with dancers became an extension to this thought process and the Ballet Boyz are such lovely people. I was hoping that music and movement would help locate the audience in painting.”
AF: How do you choose the colours and shapes?
Liber Lewis: “Colour is very intuitive for me and always has been, but layering became important in these works. The forms and shapes come out of the process. The drive is to make a painting, but meaning comes later. I had become much more interested in finding a language that could maybe hint at a figure, or imply weightlessness. Maybe the painting could insist that the viewer was looking down, or locate them in a space that feels familiar. The physicality of painting is very important to me.”
Performance by the BalletBoys
for ‘Muscle Memory’
16 March 2019
More information: Elephant
‘Muscle Memory’
open until 17 March 2019 Elephant West
Special thank you to Artist Anna Liber Lewis
Curator Becca-Pelly Fry