20 October 2010

Beyond The Safety Curtain! - An Exhibition by Lisa Biles

There is something of a buzz in Camberwell at the moment.  Promising artist Lisa Biles is holding an exhibition at Le Petit Parisien from the 19th - 31st October 2010.  We don't want to give away what is going to be in the exhibition - Lisa would rather that remained a surprise - but we have been given permission to reproduce some of her works her to give you a flavour of the event.

The artist herself describes her work: "UNIFORM? UNIFORM? Whats uniform? I don't fit in anywhere!....I don't belong anywhere! I'm stuck in a sort of 'Limbo', where everything is isolated and unsure. Confused of a better word!

Stuck in this bubble of unknowning, and frighteness...if there is such a word. I am going nowhere and fast...far too frightened, and apologetic.

My only friends are my figures, which surround me in a haunting fashion. But this atmosphere i can handle, it's the environment out 'there', that I'm scared to death off!

TO ISOLATE IS TO PROTECT.... TO PAINT IS TO DRIFT INTO ECSTASY.

A world that no one else can enter, a world that I am in control of...and a world that only I can understand and have power!"

As you can see from her work, Lisa has something of an obsession with the bizarre and the out of the ordinary.  She considers herself part of the world of the outsider and her art scratches (or possibly rips through) this surface and peers within through the jagged cuts she creates.


Many admit to a certain discomfort when contemplating her art.  The uneasiness is caused by the truth that they see within it, yet it is almost intangible and difficult to put in to words.  It is almost as if the paintings contain secrets – silent, lips hushed dramas which have been hidden from the world


It is another world too – not quite the modern world but neither is it the past, almost an alternative reality.  Toys appear in her work but these symbols of childhood innocence become vindictive and menacing at the same time as being simple symbols of childish pleasure.

The mixed emotions that Biles’ work triggers force an evocation of our own memories and experiences – and perhaps make us double take our own histories


Beyond the Safety Curtain! can be found at:
Le Petit Parisien
(the Arts Bar is upstairs)
16 Grove Lane, Camberwell, London SE5 8SY
19th - 31st October 2010, 12 Noon - 10pm
(Private View on the 21st, 6pm - midnight)
Tel: 07792972959 
email: freakybeez@yahoo.co.uk

All images courtesy of Lisa Biles