CALEDONIAN JAIL BIRD
Exhibition 14th December - 19th December '10
Late Opening Tuesday 14th December until 9:30pm
Closing Event Saturday 18th December until 10:00pm
Opening hours 10am-7pm daily
Katherine Hardy is an illustrator and artist who has very quickly conceived of quite an impressive portfolio of images that demonstrate her ability to visualise simple anecdotal ideas, one liners even, in a similar vein to celebrated British artist and academic Michael Craig-Martin. Striking colours, simple motifs and child-like configurations are the integral ingredients of Hardy’s simple snap-shot images of ever-day objects in unusual settings. A sliding guillotine at the foot of a child’s aluminous plastic slide, a brown paper parcel marked in felt with the words ‘Time Machine’ adjacent to a clock face with a lead coiling from its two ends, a multi-coloured canvas resting on an easel that is set against an luminous backdrop and then a pert penguin dressed as the French Commander Napoleon Bonaparte. Hardy’s works are beautiful modicums of visual pleasure that bombard the retina with as much joy as puzzlement.
Hardy has, with her graphic works, managed to capture something of the essence of ‘Englishness’ with illustrations that resonate a wonderful simplicity whilst poking fun at the idiosyncrasies of being part of a modern, animated information age. For our second exhibition at Caledonian Road Katherine Hardy has been commissioned to produce an aptly titled work Caledonian Jail Bird that has Hardy creating wonderful associations with a decorative motif and our temporary location, intentionally leading her away from her comfort zone and into the realm of infinite possibilities in which the altered dimensions of the work act as a significant trigger, and a work that is in stake contract to the book-size illustrations that have, up until now, becomes Hardy signature style.
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