IONE & MANN is pleased to present Read-Only Memory, a two person exhibition bringing together new and recent work by artists Amelia Bowles (b. 1993, London)  and Caroline de Lannoy (b. 1962, Brussels).

Read-Only Memory (ROM) is a type of non-volatile memory used in computer/electronic devices to store permanent data. The simplest type of solid-state ROM is as old as semiconductor technology itself but the term became more widely known in the late 1970s and 80s in the context of home computers.

Referencing technological, societal, aesthetic and conceptual developments of the latter part of the 20th century as cornerstones of our world today, the exhibition is centred around a hard-coded timeless language shared by the two artists across painting and sculpture. Favouring abstraction and geometric, almost mechanical forms and relying on repetition, the use of the line, colour, negative space as well as precise, methodical execution, Bowles and de Lannoy create work that acts simultaneously as a stimulus and a depository of meaning, emotion, memories and dreams.  

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Throughout an artistic practice spanning painting, drawing, text, sound and video, Caroline de Lannoy works from a personal lexicon of abstract forms which she continually reorganises within the visual field to generate new and imaginative resonances. In this exhibition, she presents a series of paintings that investigate the complex possibilities of the rhythms of everyday life and the passage of time through linear and circular formations as well as spatial and chromatic decisions.

Intent on negotiating not only what is seen but also what is felt, she draws on the spectrum of sensory perception to map or often orchestrate an experience. Her precisely painted lines, sometimes hard and sometimes soft-edged, reflect notions of movement and musicality, radiating with an acoustic energy amplified by the pulsation of the different colours around them. With hues ranging from pale to intense, colour also appears to function as an integral structural component to the work activating it in ways that seem to affect mood, oscillating between calming and energising, as if mirroring  circadian rhythms. Through variations in tempo, tone, intensity, density and expression, de Lannoy aims to appeal directly to human emotions, evoking feelings and memories while keeping the narrative open-ended to include playfulness and hope.

Open ended, affective perceptual encounters are at the centre of Amelia Bowles’s practice, which is primarily sculptural. Drawing on references from the fields of painting and architecture, as well as the language of diagrams and engineering, she makes use of the activity of light, colour, form and what is immaterial to create three dimensional structures that can be explored from multiple viewpoints, orchestrating a multi-layered sensory and contemplative experience.

Following her debut solo exhibition at the gallery earlier this year, Bowles returns with a body of work once again created in response to the space, relying on linear geometric compositions, the effect of light and shadow, but also the activation of the ‘false voids’ that occur from the spatial relationships between the different elements of the work and the way the audience interacts with it. Still interested in the effects of colour and varying degrees of light and shadow on our circadian rhythm, mood and well-being, she has chosen the subtlest of tones, offering a crisp, wintery palette of blue, grey and white (both often defined as achromatic). The subtlety of colour perhaps brings forth other qualities of the work. Paradoxically for stationary objects, Bowles’s structures seem to explore and invite movement as their effect and how they are perceived shift as you walk around them. There is also the underlying musicality of the tension holding the different elements of the work together, with repetitive patterns functioning as tempo or as an infinite loop which reassuringly references self-repeating fractal patterns occurring in nature. 

Bowles and de Lannoy share a language that is clearly structured and confidently expressed, relying on a solid conceptual basis. Although this shared language is abstract, concise and geometric, the starting point for both artists is the human experience, which opens up a myriad of possibilities. De Lannoy’s works appear to escape the confines of painting with a musicality and a pulsating energy that reverberates loudly from her quiet, minimalist canvases. Bowles’s hard-edged, almost mechanical structures are softened by a painterly sensibility and a comforting familiarity that renders them tender and intimate.  Simplicity of form and abstraction seem to serve as a type of universal grammar** that allows the work to exist as a container of shared experience, a portal to individual expression, or to simply create and hold space. The artists are abstracting from the complexity of the human experience within everyday life, retaining shapes and symbols that may act as gateways to transportative encounters or as safe anchors to the hardware of our time and our lived experience. At each waypoint of our journey, we have the opportunity to start again; Bowles and de Lannoy’s work allows us to retrieve our fundamentals, our essence, like a solid-state springboard for infinite potential.

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OPENING RECEPTION:

Thursday 28 November 6-8 pm

Contact:

Collecting@ioneandmann.com | Press@ionenandmann.com | General enquiries: info@ioneandmann.com

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<ABOUT>

Amelia Bowles (b. 1993, London) is an artist living and working between London and Paris.

Her work sits between sculpture, painting and architecture; making use of the activity of light, colour and form, she claims the void and what is immaterial to facilitate the conditions for a series of physiological, cognitive and perceptual encounters.  Drawing from the language of diagrams, architecture and engineering, she constructs three dimensional frameworks that produce their own activity similar to that found in nature. Each piece is composed of multiple elements, materials and surfaces that can be explored from multiple viewpoints constructing a multi-layered sensory and contemplative experience.

She studied at City and Guilds of London Art School (MA Fine Art, 2023), Bath Spa School of Art and Design (BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting, 2016) and the Florence Academy (2013).

IONE & MANN presented Wayfinding, her first solo exhibition in March 2024. [Read more]

Other recent exhibitions include: Permission to Touch at Dot Project London (2024), Ashburner Sculpture Award in Dartmoor National Park (2023); A Slash of Blue at Gerald Moore Gallery, London (2023); Expanded Impermanence with Saturation Point, London (2022); Chance and Choice  Brussels (2021); The London Group Open at The Cello Factory London (2019); Notes on Painting II at The Koppel Project, London (2019); The Big Circle Project: Immediate Effect at M17 Art Center, Kiev, Ukraine (2019).

Komorebi, her first public commission, presented by Brookfield Properties in partnership with AWITA and curated by Millie Jason-Foster, is currently on view until the end of February 2025 at 100 Bishopsgate.

Artist residencies and awards include The Royal Drawing School at Dumfries House (now part of the King’s Foundation) and the Leverhulme Scholarship for City and Guilds of London Art School (2022-2023) where she also received a Prize for Outstanding Critical Engagement.

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Caroline de Lannoy (b. 1962, Brussels, Belgium) is an artist living and working in London.

She works across painting, drawing, text, sound and video, exploring time, space and perception through a language of abstraction. Throughout her practice, she investigates cultural, social and existential issues and the subsequent acts of recollection. Her series of paintings combines a sensory-affective field of interplay between lines, shapes, colours, punctuation marks and textual elements with a conceptual approach that questions the everyday experiences. She creates compositions that draw upon the spectrum of sensory perception and feelings, and highlight the conversation between the visible and the invisible.

She is a graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art (1993), Central Saint Martins (1991) and the Athens School of Fine Arts (1988).

Her work has been exhibited internationally including solo and group presentations at The Collection Lincoln Museum, La Verrière - Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, The Gallery Grange House, Art In General, Tate Britain, Huddersfield Art Gallery, MASS MoCA, Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum, Royal Academy, Gallery North, Arnolfini, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Whitworth Art Gallery, Sint-Lukas Galerij, Whitstable Biennale, The Mondriaan House, Kettle's Yard, South London Gallery. She has presented her sound work ‘Colour Tale’ at the Clore Auditorium, Tate Britain.

She has completed private and public art commissions worldwide including Hoffmann-La Roche, Switzerland; St George’s Hospital, London; Lift Orchard Park, NHS Primary Health Care Centre, Hull; Huddersfield Library & Art Gallery, among others.

She has been an artist in residence at la Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, Stiftung Insel Hombroich Museum in Germany, International Artist in Residence in Guernsey and the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation.

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