NORFOLK.- The Gallery at Norwich University of the Arts is presenting a body of recent canvas works by the artist Avis Newman.

Composed of separate assemblages of interchangeable elements, Newman’s canvas works, made during the last four years, continue to explore some of the underlying concerns of her work. These can be identified in the processes of thought that enable the mute voice and silent rhythms of internal life to weave in and out of the world of the everyday and in so doing questions our presumptions of ‘boundary’, ‘framing’ or ‘completion’

In this exhibition the works are hung in collections; layered and balanced against the wall or partially overlapped and in sets and sequences. The combinations of elements resist an absolute fixity suggesting a space of temporality where the relationship between parts proposes a series of mobile elements. Provisional in arrangement the images and parts do not necessarily suggest a correspondence to things in the world but are things in themselves, or of the mind.

In Newman’s past works there has been a concern with description and naming and with notions of completion. These works, as with previously exhibited works such as ‘Configuration of no-thing’ 2007-2009 and ‘Beyond the Speed of Sound’ 2007-2009, suggest a potential for reconfiguration that thwarts such inclinations. Here time and memory are given another space.

The artist’s earlier canvas work, objects and works on paper initially explored ideas of scale, materiality and representation. Large scale installations and unframed canvases such as ‘Figure who no one is...’ 1984 evocative of the limitless space of dreams and reverie depicted fragmented partially realised forms. Subsequently Newman’s work abandoned the emphasis on representation. The tensions that exist between raw materiality and the immateriality of thought and by extension language became a preoccupation as in the series ‘Webs’ 1994 and ‘Meridians’ 1995 and in the sculptural boxes containing organic substances.

Mobile Relations is curated by Simon Granger, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at NUA.

Avis Newman is a Visiting professor of Fine Art at NUA.

Avis Newman is a London based artist. Her work has featured in numerous exhibitions at national and international venues including Camden Arts Centre, Hayward Gallery, Ikon Gallery, Matt’s Gallery, Tate, De Appel Foundation, Kannal Art Foundation, MoMA Dublin, MCA Sydney, MoMA New York, Renaissance Society Chicago and NG Prague.