lois palframan ARTIST
Reviews
'your work is honest and carries something of your heart and soul and speaks to soul and speaks to people' Kay Grant
'birthmarks' Gry Buhrkall
'really nice' Simon Reynell, Another Timbre CDs
minimalist and very light touch, beautiful...
'deliberate moments of colour' Sam Boer, communications and research assistant , International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, University of Guelph
'fabulous Scores' Karen Sherwood, Director of Cupola Gallery.
'perfect' Gill Whiteley,senior lecturer,art history and visual culture, Loughborough University
very cutting edge Dr Willow Jane Thompson
'subtle and graceful' Amparo Arrospide.
'drifting through the ages from shadow to brightness showing the pathway of light. a picture of the universe. energy. uplifting'. Doreen James.
​
​
​
Kestutis Vasiliunas-beautiful. John Jasnoch- beautiful and concise
'whispers'. 'like being in the woods' Margaret Horrocks
'I love their minimal intensity and abstract quality of the marks.....'
Claudi Piripippi
The quest was not for anecdote perhaps but on the art of drawing. A long thread of tradition scarcely limited by a border, an absent conventional frame. From tiny drops of colour and form to a small patchwork at the bottom right, all along a black line between two hemispheres. This patchwork is also a map for treasure island, where rational jewels are held to ransom.
Amparo Arrospide
Only today!! Last chance... - Redcar Contemporary Art Gallery | Facebook residency 2013 exhibition SUN SEA SKY SAND
Iklectik london 2019
.jpg)
At Edge of See’ is a new collaborative project between Lois Palframan (art) and Kay Grant (voice). Both use improvisation as an approach to exploring and seeing the world with fresh eyes and open ears. Lois creates her drawings from an inner silent place. Kay decorates the silence, interpreting the drawings through sound. The result is a sort of ‘anti-lecture’ on art and music, with meaning conveyed beyond words. Lois lives in Sheffield and works alongside improvisers including Charlie Collins and Beatrix Ward-Fernandez. Kay lives in London and has played with many musicians, amongst them Alex Ward, Adrian Northover, Marcio Mattos, Jim Dvorak, John Edwards, Ntshuks Bonga, Caroline Kraabel and Hannah Marshall.
This event forms part of Making Ways, a programme supported by Sheffield Culture Consortium through Arts Council England to showcase, celebrate and develop the exceptional contemporary visual art produced in the city.
'unusual and minimalist exhibition',JakeHarries, curator. 'brave, variety'
​
'Bird-like traces!
Vocalizations highly original! Bird-like whispers, whistling, silence..'
​
Scores: Painting Not Writing, an exhibition by Lois Palframan -
An exhibition in Access Space's small Foyer gallery of around 40 visual artworks intended to be played in an improvised way by musicians.
Based on an impossibly objective description, these pieces, rectangles where the white of the pictorial surface prevails, with all its load of reminiscences, with all the pictorial cultural baggage that the observer may or may not have, pose a provocation ( at least one). The pictorial elements on the white surface (usual metaphor for silence, but also for light) are minimal, micro elements, tiny lines - straight, false straight, curvilinear, spirals, loops -, micro circles that can also be grammatical stops, exclamation or interrogation signs as a minimum concession to textual language, mysteriously ambiguous sketches of drawings, arrow points, delicate strokes, faintly coloured or grey ... In some pieces (scores 13, 12, 1, 9 for example) there are lines that go down from the nonexistent frame, descend or rise from the edge of the canvas (page), as if they were continuing an outside line, as if a line of light descended from the sky, crossed the border and entered the white of the visual surface. A game that wants to make drawing and world come together. It could also be said that they all trace tropisms, the term for a biological phenomenon, indicating growth or turning movement of a biological organism, usually a plant, in response to an environmental stimulus, which includes the tendencies for the stalk to grow towards light (phototropism) and the roots to grow downward towards the water or interior of the earth (gravitropism). Palframan´s tropisms are endowed with a great sense of humor and a resistance to make sign, to signify, to refer to or act as proxy for any kind of representational art or vision of reality. Even though associations are inevitable, by way of contrast. Translating to the pictorial work the well known linguistic theory of Saussure, where every sign is made up of signifier and signified, Palframan ´s works refuse to form signs, but let the signifiers breathe. For this reason, hers is the work of a contemporary visual artist, who rejects and questions the search for unity (political, psychological, pictorial). If such a search for unity is always at the service of those who impose it, if capitalism produces its imaginaries, if it challenges us with a repertoire of forms and experiences for our consumption and subjectivation, our way of resistance can´t be to contribute with new imaginaries that will be incorporated into the repertoire. There is, therefore, resistance to meaning, which in turn destabilizes the observer.
A few brief notes on these works (scores 0 to 13) - Amparo Arróspide 2017 poet
Partiendo de una descripción imposiblemente objetiva, estas piezas, rectángulos donde se impone el blanco del lienzo y de la superficie pictórica, con toda su carga de reminiscencias, con todo el bagaje cultural pictórico que pueda tener o no tener el observador, plantean una provocación (al menos una). Los elementos pictóricos sobre el blanco (habitual metáfora del silencio, pero también de la luz) son mínimos, microelementos, líneas minúsculas – rectas, falsas rectas, curvilíneas, espirales, bucles-, microcírculos que pueden ser también puntos, algún signo de interrogación y de exclamación como una concesión al lenguaje textual, esbozos de dibujos, misteriosos en cuanto ambiguos, ángulos puntas de flechas, trazos delicados, tenues, en color y en grisáceo negro… En algunas piezas (scores 13, 12, 1, 9 por ejemplo) hay líneas que bajan desde el marco inexistente, descienden o ascienden desde el borde del lienzo (de la página) , como si continuaran una línea exterior, como si una línea de luz descendiera desde el cielo, atravesara el límite y entrara en el blanco de la superficie visual. Un juego que quiere hacer confluir dibujo y mundo.Podría también decirse que todas trazan tropismos, el término botánico para designar a las plantas que se dirigen o inclinan hacia la luz (fototropismo) y también a las que van hacia el agua o el interior de la tierra. Tropismos con un gran sentido del humor y con una resistencia a hacer signo, a significar, a representar una visión figurativa de la realidad. Trasladando a la obra pictórica la teoría lingüística de Saussure, donde todo signo está conformado por significante y significado, en los trabajos de Palframan se rehúye el formar signos, se deja respirar a los significantes. Por ello es la de una artista visual actual, que rehúye y cuestiona la búsqueda de la unidad (política, psicológica, pictórica). Si esta búsqueda siempre está al servicio de quien la impone, si el capitalismo produce imaginarios, si nos interpela con un conjunto de formas y experiencias para nuestro consumo y subjetivación, nuestro modo de resistencia no puede ser el de contribuir con nuevos imaginarios que a su vez serán incorporados al repertorio. Hay, pues, resistencia a la significación, que desestabiliza al observador.
Review by Cupola Gallery of "Colour Code" 2017...' to the muted colours of Lois Palframan'
1st Feb. 2018. 'score' at Access Space, Sheffield. 'GREAT', brilliant, novel :-
Access Space invites you to the first performance of the latest work by artist lois palframan, “score”. In this collaborative concert a trio of musicians explore the implications inherent in the word, while projections of the artwork, running concurrent with the performance, provide the audience with added insight into the process. “The live and spontaneous interpretation by the musicians is some kind of resolution of the conflict between title and artwork”.
BEATRIX WARD-FERNANDEZ violin
CHARLIE COLLINS waterphone & percussion
FAYE MacCALMAN clarinet & tenor saxophone
lois palframan visuals
13.3.18
improvisation workshop and concert with Kay Grant, Jan Todd, Lyn Hodnett and others, playing improvised graphic score. harp, vocals, accordion, percussion, and more. 'philosophical variety' 'PLAYABLE'
'landscape of a very calm imaginary place' Kay Grant
'drawings are comfortable to look at, calming, soothing .' :- 20 x 20 Access exhibition 2019
'at edge of see':-
marvellous, lovely, works, avant-garde, interesting, great, exceptional, cool, awesome,... :-
I. If the artist is the one who can capture the invisible in the visible, Lois Palframan's art is mysterious, it lives in the ambiguity of the visible-Invisible, of not-yet-being, of being possible.
It is related to “chaos”, not as disorder in the longing for order, but as an abyss, a black hole from which possibilities spring. Destroying the prejudices of vision, stripping the eyes that contemplate so that they can contemplate in what there is everything that can be, to obtain the fullness of the current experience.
When asked which is her work process, the answer is
“once a month, always on 20 x 20cm canvas panels, I decide in advance the title and idea and then it is improvised and perhaps unseen, using natural materials”
Like a Taoist, she knows that to paint infinity you have to aim at the void. And through the material of the void, suggestion is revealed. Hers is also an art of suggestion.
As a Zen Buddhist artist would do, her work features the unfinished stroke and sometimes the single brushstroke. It could even be said that her compositions are the equivalent of haiku in poetry.
II. What is the vibration by which an entity can be heard?
The whole world is vibrating energy, and in the same way that seeing requires knowing, knowing how to look, to be able to hear the world´s vibrating enery you need to know how to listen. Things need to be listened to and except for blind people, our societies have long since lost that listening ability, as well as the ability to perceive them through touch.
And so, her work is showing us how to listen to things, to physical and non physical bodies, with improvised vocalizations, sound vibrations that emanate from her throat, capturing for instance the shape of ivy, bamboo, her own drawings. The world suggested in the abyss of creative chaos becomes veiledly present in dynamic perceptions,
For Lois Palframan, the unfinished is not a destroyed perfection, nor a perfection in the process of being achieved; the unfinished is the immediate image of what is being, of what never ceases to be; the unfinished is perfect in every instant of that perception.
Amparo Arróspide 2024