Environmental Themes.
Jo Howell
Pamela Ormston
Museleon
12/03/24 -13/04/24
Jo Howell
Jo Howell has been a professional photographic artist since she left Uni in 2009. Jo is a cyanotype specialist. She uses photography and art to work with other humans in beautiful chaos. Jo works commercially to photograph 3D artworks like glass sculptures.
Jo Howell is an ambitious artist from a working-class background in Sunderland. Her art uses science, nostalgia, and history to explore hidden female narraitves.
Me & Mary Elenor
This work started as a commission for The Bowes Museum, she took inspiration from Mary Elenor Bowes, a promising botanist with a scientific understanding of plants. In the 18th century, women were not permitted to engage with knowledge, nor were they allowed to enter the institutions of education. Heinous domestic abuse was inflicted upon Mary by her husband who wished to take her fotube. History lost another potential female scientist to the patriarchy. Her story is relevant today because sex-based oppression still exists.
This work has grown since its first conception, with people adding, evolving, and strengthening the narrative of the piece.
Pamela Ormston
At the heart of Pamela's artistic practice is the exploration of connection and my place in the world. Pamela moved to the coast a few years ago having lived in cities since leaving her coastal hometown of Dublin, Ireland nearly 20 years ago. On the surface, her work is a snapshot of life at the seaside and the busyness that is drawn to it. She is fascinated by the hive of human life that scurries and meanders along the edges of the water. She finds inspiration for her work both in the colour and forms that present themselves as well as imagery that provokes memories of the seaside. Although her journey as an artist started years ago – Pamela did a degree in Fine Art and became an art teacher; always dabbling with making and creating along the way – she only really started seriously painting a couple of years ago.
Pamela makes the time around work, children, relationships and life to take care of and nurture this growing practice. Day to day, she works as a secondary school art teacher in Sunderland and lives her working life to the pace of the school bell. She is also a mother to three very lively young children. As a result of these things, she is acutely aware of the speed of passing time. Paintings of these fleeting moments that she observes, Pamela is not just preserving them on a canvas, but meticulously examining and revisiting the moment as she paints.
Museleon
Symbiosis
All life on Earth is made from cells.
Without cells, there can be no life.
Symbiosis looks at the connections between living organisms at a cellular and tissue level via imagined habitats in art and reimagined sound. The ideas of the deep interconnectivity of living things, the beauty and fragility of cells, and the micro similarities of all living things are the basis of this work, where I have been creating A3 drawings in a pen of imagined different habitat types, such as jungles or rock pools created using plant and animal cell types. The overall idea is that all living things depend on each other. We are structurally similar at the cell level and deeply connected and the climate emergency and the human impact on habitats is leading to species decline and extinction. Which includes our extinction.
A self-taught Audio and Image artist living and based in Sunderland, Museleon has been creating both sound and image works for over 20 years.
These 6 works come with sound pieces connected, please scan or click the QR to listen to the work.
