On A Clear Day: Rebecca Partridge

Informality is delighted to announce its upcoming solo exhibition ‘ On A Clear Day’ with British artist, Rebecca Partridge. 

 ‘On a Clear Day’ evokes landscape with its suggestion of looking and of how far the eye can see, but equally, it points us to a state of mind, a clarity of thought. The exhibition title is borrowed and lends reference to a series of 30 screen-prints created by American artist, Agnes Martin in 1973 also titled ‘On A Clear Day’. Martin’s work is resolutely abstract, yet frequently titled after landscapes, made with the intention of evoking emotional states. The paintings in this exhibition are very ‘real’, being located in the world, yet they share many of Martin’s concerns, made with a desire to cultivate an attitude of quiet attention. 

The exhibition brings together paintings made over the past five years in response to extended periods of time spent walking in and observing remote landscapes, with new work made from observations of the sky from the Dorset Coast. As Nicholas Alfrey states in his accompanying essay:  

“Partridge continues to work on a variety of scales, combining canvases, panels or framed sheets of paper into single multi-part compositions, such as Mountain (Fragments) and Sea-Sky Studies. For all the diverse techniques and formats she employs, there is an underlying connectedness running through all the work, and ideally, they are intended to be experienced as a complete ensemble. She has spoken of the landscapes she responds to not in terms of overpowering sensations or intimidating grandeur but as something familiar, spaces where some kind of transcendent experience is possible, and not only for the lucky few. Her ideal is to as treat the gallery space as itself a landscape for a visitor to become absorbed in, a place in which, through the contemplation of painting, inner states might also be revealed.”

Rebecca Partridge currently lives and works in London. Since graduating from the Royal Academy Schools in 2007 she has exhibited Internationally. Solo exhibitions include, ‘In The Meantime’, at Kunsthalle CCA Andratx, Spain, ‘Notations’ Kunstverein Springhornhof and ‘Painting Fast, Painting Slow’ at Konstkraft Ljusne, Sweden. She has been awarded several international scholarships including from The Nordic Kunstnasenter Dale, Norway, The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, USA, and The Terra Foundation for American Art Fellowship in Giverny, France. Over the past ten years she has curated a series of exhibitions taking place in Germany, Norway and the U.K, most recently ‘Scaling The Sublime’ at Nottingham University which she co-curated in 2018, followed by ‘In Pursuit of Elusive Horizons’ at Parafin Gallery, London.