A chamber can be a myriad of things. It might be physical- an enclosed space where one goes to retreat, or immaterial- an imagined space which exists in the mind. ‘Of the Chamber’ comes from a line in “If Not, Winter”; Anne Carson’s translation of the written poetry left in fragments by the ancient Greek poet Sappho. These fragments offer richness in what is lost; a number of remnants which hundreds of years later left clues to somebody’s way of thinking. This creates a fascinating form of mystery which can also be communicated in painting- I think of artists like Hilma af Klint and Etel Adnan. It is this kind of poetic rendering which invites feelings of dreamy psychology and loose spirit; a flowing in and out of forms and ways of thinking. The paintings in ‘Of the Chamber’ distill and interrogate geographies of dream and memory with emphasis towards the ever-changing mood and colours of experience- remnants of movement in a world that wants us to be fixed.
-Alice Bray