Until 3rd September Josie Jenkins and Daniel Halsall are at Bridewell Studios & Gallery with two new bodies of work from these two studio neighbours.
Both artists are based at Arena Studios, and both are contemporary painters, but that’s about where the similarities stop. Josie Jenkins has always focussed on representative, landscape, still life and figurative paintings, with abstraction used as a tool rather than a theme.
Daniel Halsall’s work is more immediately playful with a reductive, graphic, approach to representing recognisable, everyday forms.
Knowing how closely the two artists work, sharing music and feedback through thin studio walls, adds a useful perspective to the exhibition. Instead of grouped, communal, studio shows, these artists literally share a working space, and working time, and something of their communication comes across through the curation of the work.
Parallel, but not mixed. Tonally relevant, but subjectively separate. It’s just nice to see co-working without strict collaboration working as well as this.
It’s a short exhibition run, ending three days after this paper goes to print, but worth trying to see.
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Josie Jenkins & Daniel Halsall’s exhibition at Bridewell Studios & Gallery ends 3rd September. Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith