The Portico Library’s August-September 2016 exhibition will be Paramender 

Pippa Gatty and Stan Sandig  who are based respectively in Yorkshire and the Isle of Mull, have been brought together by The Portico Library for a combined showcase of recent sculptures and paintings, reflecting the collection’s many volumes on astronomy, mineralogy and fine art and providing new perspectives on their current work. 

Pippa Gatty’s process involves reference to catalogues and archives, as in her series of drawings based on the Messier objects, astronomical phenomena documented for The French Academy of Sciences at the height of the Enlightenment. Her interest in the margins between fact and fiction, reality and the imaginary, manifests in her evocative paintings’ dialogue with the Romantic and metaphysical traditions of the nineteenth century. 

Acts of “pretending and believing” are central to Pippa’s work, and she sees the exercise of artistic labour as a way of bringing-into-being fresh realities – from mind into matter. Likewise, Stan Sandig’s collectible mineral sculptures are created through sensitive reaction to the rock’s inherent structures, negotiating with materials to tease out their interior contours and planes. His sophisticated handling of tension and balance produces dynamic yet harmonious forms and demonstrates his commitment to studying the theory of sculpture, from African and Asian traditions to Hepworth, Gabo and Brancusi.

Pippa and Stan’s exhibition title, ‘Paramender’, describes a device used for fixing parallax, where two lines of sight are not aligned. The artists’ two different perspectives are offered here together through their shared response to The Portico’s collection and space, and the common aspects highlighted with accompanying texts.

Pippa Gatty & Stan Sandig, ‘Paramender’, 19th August – 17th September 2016.Free preview Thursday 18th August, 5.30pm-8pm.

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