Spotlight

Spotlight Artist Charlotte Edey

Championed by Freddie Powell
The Wick Culture - Sea View - Charlotte Edey & Azadeh Elmizadeh
Above  Sea View – Charlotte Edey & Azadeh Elmizadeh
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The Wick Culture - Charlotte Edey Portrait, 2024
Above  Charlotte Edey Portrait, 2024
Interview
Charlotte Edey
09 October 2024
Interview
Charlotte Edey
09 October 2024
Poised to be shown at one of the most prestigious contemporary art events in the world, Charlotte Edey is set to make a big impact. In the Focus section of Frieze this week, Ginny on Frederick gallery dedicates their booth to a solo presentation by Edey, the self-taught Manchester-born artist is part of a cohort of young women artists continuing to evolve the ideas and methods of Surrealism, suffused with their own personal imaginary.
Among the loud crowds and clamour, Edey’s works Thin Places sing in a different key, her soft surrealism drawing in you in gently, abstract, sensuous forms sketched in soft pastel on sanded paper and beaded tapestries, framed in exquisite sapele panel frames that recall Edwardian furniture. Some of the works recall Beyte Saar’s windows, encasing luxurious, fantastical elements in their sculptural structures – glass beads, silk, organza, freshwater pearl and white jade – all hinting at mysticism, at the convergence of bodies with objects and space, the blurring of the perception of exterior and interior.

Edey’s new works have come a long way from her earlier, more illustrative work, figurative tapestries and drawings. “The presentation at Frieze is the most ambitious show to date. It takes the form of a domestic interior, with the threshold marked by soft carpeting and two stained glass windows in a nod to the codes of the imagery of nineteenth century literary interior space. I’m excited to see what everybody thinks, as there is a big shift in scale and ambition of the works.”

While recent exhibitions have introduced daring new elements in other dimensions – a recent show at Anat Egbi in Los Angeles included a re-upholstered Edwardian two-way conversation chair, Edey explains that “drawing is at the core of my practice: each of the tapestries exists as a pastel drawing before being translated on a jacquard loom and hand beaded with glass beads, freshwater pearls and semi-precious stones. The language of embroidery follows the pattern of mark-making of drawing, with dots and dashes building the form and I’m really excited about presenting them together to blur this material distinction.”

Freddie Powell, founder of Ginny on Frederick, is Edey’s champion for The Wick. Powell put on an exhibition of Edey’s work last year, and the Frieze show is an exciting step for both of them. “Charlotte and I have been friends for nearly a decade, and it feels like we have sort of grown up into the art-world together which is an incredibly unique and special relationship. I think the work she is currently making, the works we are showing at Frieze, manage to be poetic and introspective but still incredibly urgent – something not a lot of artists can do smoothly. I’m also lucky enough to get to raid her bookshelves regularly, as she has the best library, recently introducing me to the world of late 1970’s Italian literature.”

Lately, books Edey has been turning to include “the work of symbolist architects John Hejduk and Charles Jencks, the metaphysical writings of Italo Calvino and Gaston Bachelard and the writer Jennifer Higgie”, guided by a abiding interest in “exploring selfhood through the disembodying of subjects, examining the shifting historical, spiritual and environmental realms that shape and inform the plurality of identity.” Edey’s visual assimilation of these ideas unfolds in Thin Places, with a hint of magic realism, where “interior and exterior worlds as permeable, with no clear delineation between bodies and minds, selves and others, objects and sites.”

About the champion

The Wick Culture - Freddie Powell

Freddie Powell is the founder of Ginny on Frederick, a gallery located in Farringdon, London.

“The work she is currently making, manage to be poetic and introspective but still incredibly urgent.”

Place of Birth

Manchester, UK

Education

Limited, until The Royal Drawing School Postgraduate ‘The Drawing Year’ in 2022

Awards, Accolades

Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2022, The Cass Art Prize 2022

Current exhibitions

Thin Places, Ginny on Frederick at Frieze London, 9 – 13 October 2024

Spiritual guides, Mentors

My Taurus sisters Cher and Enya

Your advice for an emerging artist?

Devote as much time to your practice as you can around keeping a roof over your head. Evenings and weekends and stolen hours gradually inch open the doors to more time eventually.


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