Mike Pratt - preview Friday at 7pm

Mike Pratt, Lobster, 2020, Oil and sericol ink on canvas, 130 x 100 cm, 51 1/8 x 39 3/8 in (MP0312) Mike Pratt 18 January - 29 February 2020 Weds - Sat, 12 - 5pm Preview: Friday 17 January 7 - 9pm WORKPLACE First Floor The Old Posthouse 19 - 21 West Street, Gateshead, UK workplacegallery.co.uk Workplace is excited to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Mike Pratt. Based upon documentation of a rug made by the Dada artist Hans Arp (1886 - 1966), these works have been silk-screen printed in collaboration with the artist’s father, a printmaker, before being painted over by Pratt. The rasterised print maintains a tenuous connection to the historical image which, combined with the imperfections of the printing process, and beneath Pratt’s painterly smears of intense, lucent colour, creates a composite of information. Each work has been titled after a seemingly random object: Bucket, Dog, Pond, Lamp-post, Lobster, Volvo... Collectively they operate as if a hand of cards, a word association game, or a surreal taxonomy. Pratt’s titles act in an associative way, opening up potential readings rather than closing down the work towards a specific meaning. The title functions as another layer accruing to a complex strata leading away from painting and towards sculpture. As a group, they maintain an equivalence, holding the room in a palpable, yet illogical, tension. (read more...) Mike Pratt (b.1987 Seaham, County Durham, UK) lives and works in Whitley Bay, UK. He graduated from Northumbria University in 2009 where he was awarded the Paul Mason Sculpture Prize. In 2014 he completed a two-year postgraduate programme at De Ateliers in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and in 2016 he won the Koninklijke Prijs voor Vrije Schilderkunst - the prestigious Royal Award for Modern Painting in Holland. Solo exhibitions include Deep Pond, Galerie Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam; Rubberhead/Rubbernecking B.M.W. Edinburgh, Good Mourning Bell Workplace Gateshead, Cumberland Sausage Extraspazio, Rome, and HUBBA HUBBA, Satellite, Newcastle. Group Exhibitions include Offspring de Ateliers, Amsterdam; Riff/Rift Baltic39, Newcastle upon Tyne; Right Eye, Left Eye V8 Plattform für neue Kunst, Karlsruhe, Germany. For available work and prices please contact: sales@workplacegallery.co.uk

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Parham Ghalamdar - Friday at 7pm

Parham Ghalamdar, Spectre, 2019, Oil on canvas, 80 x 59cm Parham Ghalamdar 18 January - 29 February 2020 Preview: Friday 17th January 7 - 9 pm all welcome Workplace Foundation The Old Post Office 19-21 West Street Gateshead, NE8 1AD Workplace Foundation is excited to present the first solo exhibition of Parham Ghalamdar. Painted in intense acidic colour, surreal forms and structures inhabit desolate and empty landscapes. Uncanny and strange these objects adhere to rigorous placement, assimilating elements drawn from a diverse range of Western and Middle-Eastern Art History such as Caravaggio, Goya, Bouguereau, Soviet Socialist realism, graffiti, pop culture and traditional Persian miniatures. Parham Ghalamdar’s works switch between the aesthetics of realism and the cartoon. Through this absurdist strategy Ghalamdar obfuscates narrative enabling the painting to stand alone, resistant to a didactic reading. The considered, rational structuring of his paintings stand as a counterpoint to the oppressive weight of dogmatic ideology that Parham experienced in his homeland. Born in Tehran, Iran in 1994, Parham Ghalamdar studied Printing and Media at the Art University in Tehran. Parham was a founding member of ELF Crew, the first graffiti collective in Iran. ELF became known for their transgressive and coded resistance to the regime and their liberal progressive subculture. Arrested multiple times for graffiti Parham was eventually detained indefinitely in the West of Iran in 2014 where interrogations became more forceful and the authorities began to investigate his associations and social networks more thoroughly. Fearing for his life (his sexuality, if exposed, would be punishable by death) Parham managed to escape Iran, travelling through Asia before being granted asylum in the UK. In 2019 he completed his BA in Fine Art, Painting at Manchester School of Art. Previous exhibitions include Stretch, P.S Mirabel Gallery, Manchester; Graffiti, Vandalism and Protest in Iran: An Archival Curation, People’s History Museum, Manchester; Super Brain, Chapel Gallery, Ormskirk, UK; Kamil Gallery, Monaco; Art, social space and public discourse in Iran, Coulter Art Gallery, Stanford, USA; Contemporary Iranian Art, Sotheby’s Los Angeles; The Mine Gallery, Dubai, UAE; Affenfaust Gallery, Hamburg; Few scenes from paradise, Atbin Gallery, Tehran. Parham Ghalamdar lives and works in Manchester, UK (read more...) About Workplace Foundation: Workplace Foundation is a charity based in Gateshead in the North of England that supports emerging and under-represented artists. We have a specific commitment to UK art scenes outside of London and with a focus on The North of England. Workplace Foundation was founded by Workplace, a commercial gallery started in 2003 by Paul Moss and Miles Thurlow in Gateshead in the North East of England. Workplace Foundation is a registered Charity and we rely on donations from individuals and trusts and foundations to enable us to do our work. There are a number of different ways you can support Workplace Foundation (learn more...) Workplace Foundation The Old Post Office 19-21 West Street Gateshead NE8 1AD, United Kingdom T: +44 (0)191 477 2200 info@workplacefoundation.art www.workplacefoundation.art Office hours: Tues–Sat 11–5pm Workplace Foundation is a Company Registered in England and Wales Company Name: Workplace Foundation Charity Registration Number: 1174379 VAT Number: GB 133 4963 12 With generous support from:

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