Kapellmeister pulls a doozy

Richard Meaghan & Andrew Foulds present
Kapellmeister Pulls A Doozy
A Proposal

The fictional Mary Kapellmeister was born to immigrant parents in Liverpool on 1st May 1892. Her seminal play The Bankers was released to strong, if localised critical acclaim in 1921 and lent heavily on her experiences of the First World War for the story and tone of the work. The narrative follows the fortunes of a group of bank clerks who head off to help in the war effort and the psychological and physical strain placed on the women they left behind. It is thought that Kapellmeister used the letters from her fiancé and brother, who both died in the war, to inform her account of the atrocities that faced the young men sent to the trenches, however, it must also be understood that much of the atmosphere evoked will have been from the fractured imagination of a woman drowning in grief. It is unknown why this play did not propel Mary onto greater success, perhaps the often surreal quirks (the whole of the cast were males, harking back to traditional theatre) were too much to take for a mere provincial audience. She died penniless and out of work only 5 years later at the age of 34.

The name Kapellmeister derives from the term given to the director of a modern choir, however, the term originated from the director of the orchestra, choir or opera in the household of a German prince. The use of this name is intended to suggest a complexity to Mary’s character, to enhance her outsider credentials and build on the myth of the tragic genius. Living as a second generation German immigrant in England during the First World War, we can surmise that her family would have received a certain amount of trouble from the wave of nationalist propaganda that surfaces at the onset of the war. There is also then, the issue of where your own allegiances lie, especially as she may have also had family living in and fighting for Germany. The logical conclusion of this personal history is that it is easier to understand how someone in Mary Kapellmeister’s position could see with more clarity the futility and stupidity of the war.
Then there is the matter of Mary’s idiosyncratic quirks, such as her use of an all male cast in The Bankers. It seems counter-productive, especially as the feminist movement was at last starting to show signs of advancement, particularly due to women’s important role in the factories during the First World War, ending the myth that they could not handle hard labour. It may be deemed possible that Mary had no interest in the feminist movement and that producing an all male cast- even for the female roles- was a way of lubricating her relationships with the male dominated hierarchy within the theatre system. It could also be read that by negating the presence of women within the play, she is actually accentuating the impact of their absence, heightening the sense of an emotional imbalance. Add this to evidence within the paintings that the male actors playing female parts seemed to be encouraged to maintain their masculine traits, such as keeping facial hair, adding to the sense of the ludicrous, and the second option seems most likely. The intention of giving our heroine a quasi-political surface, yet leaving the question open to interpretation has been to add flesh to her artistic skeleton, giving her a life outside of Andrew Foulds and Richard Meaghan’s interests and challenging the modernists notion of definitive’s.


For Richard Meaghan and Andrew Foulds and the artists involved, Mary Kapellmeister and The Bankers offers an opportunity to explore within a restricted contextual space their mutual interest in the themes of fantasy and nostalgia. They have both used the story of Mary Kapellmeister in their own individual way and their intention for themselves and the artists involved has always been to create artistic re-interpretations and not illustrations of the various events.

Richard Meaghan

Richard Meaghan’s paintings are invented and are an amalgamation of a number of differing experiences that revolve around memory, making use of allegorical and pictorial inventions and references from contemporary art and art history. Meaghan’s narrations are not linear, but rather associative and analytical, so that the works function like short stories, in which the plot is compressed into single images. However, the fragments have to be pieced together and thus can seemingly fall somewhere between dream and reality. The resulting paintings appear as visions of somewhere familiar yet strange, uncanny shimmerings based on careful study of our world that in turn suggests another.

2008 One can often be thwarted by some antidisestablishmentarianism, Gallery Primo Alonso, London (artist & curator)
No Current Bun, View2Gallery, Liverpool (solo)
Richard Meaghan& Rene Holm, Galerie db24, Hamburg, Germany
Group Show, Galerie Wolfsen, Denmark
2006-7 I'll be Your Mirror; Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool; Gallery Primo Alonso, London (artist & curator)
2006 Exposed; Manchester Square, London (curated by Stephen Snoddy)
Jerusalem; Dean Clough galleries, Halifax (artist & curator)

Rui Matsunaga
“There is a fusion of contemporary cartoon animation and ancient mythology in Matsuanaga’s paintings. They show us the shapes and attributes of what we might call Modern Gods.” (Morgan Falconer, RA Magazine 2002) Rui Matsunaga is interested in exaggerating the tension between reality and fiction in the everyday, where the fairy-tale seeps through, guiding and revealing a dimension fused with the magical and spiritual. Books and films of fantasy, Science Fiction, mythologies and Japanese comics (Manga) inform my paintings and merge around the figures she paint. Everyday images collected from magazines, newspapers and photographs are used as starting points and are morphed into the otherworldly. Through the slow process of painting, she becomes far more involved with the images, nurturing the ordinary figures into revealing the entities existing in a magical or spiritual world.2007 Tech-Mac-Maya-Kon (Solo), Primo Alonso, London2006 10th Planet, Unit A04 Tower Bridge Business Complex, Bermondsey, UK I’ll be your mirror, Liverpool Biennale, Liverpool (Curated by David Hancock and Richard Meaghan) Jerusalem, Dean Clough, Halifax Heathen Threshold, Sartorial Contemporary, London Outdoors, Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London2005 We have Left the City Gates, Nunnery Gallery, London (Curated by JJ Charlesworth) New London Kicks, Wooster Projects, New York RAdical, Jerwood Space. London NLK (In association with Armory Show), SohoHouse, New York


Rene Holm
René Holm’s extensive series of paintings Things Happen seem to touch on such existential themes as destiny and free will. In many of the pictures we encounter a person in front of a house with these two elements blending together with the trees, the sky and the landscape into an atmospheric unity. Many of the works have a certain melancholy about them. One senses loss, upheaval, change, belief and doubt, but at the same time a feeling of strength, a taking on board of the fact that things happen. One never knows what tomorrow may bring, a daily reminder that yesterday we could not prepare ourselves for what was destined to happen today.
We cannot control our destiny, but it is that very awareness that gives us strength, the strength of the individual. It is as if these works remind us how inclined we are to link our identity to our surroundings and just how fragile that can be. Our job, our family, as well as material things such as our house and where we live. René Holm has taken his characters and placed them outside, With their backs to their houses, in the middle of a natural world where night and day, summer and winter, are indistinguishable. But far from giving a feeling of insecurity and fright, there is a focus on the person, standing boldly in the foreground, liberated from their surroundings, calm, upright and looking the spectator directly in the eye.
At the same time one cannot simply interpret these pictures as a tribute to pure individualism. Certain works present more characters, lending a greater complexity and – not surprisingly – reminding us that we are individuals with a need to be near others. In Carpe Diem we see a man and a woman in the foreground. Behind them is a road that runs under a covered bridge. The couple are at once united and separated – despite the fact that they are holding hands, their bodies and faces are directed away from each other. Will they remain together or go their separate ways? They both seem static and reluctant. Maybe they are nervous about taking their first step towards uncertainty – whether together or by themselves? Through the bridge we perceive a brighter sky. Hence the title. Movement is necessary: seize the day, live in the here and now, follow the light! If you dare!
You could have it all focuses on the uneven number three and its unlucky significance in human relationships, here in the form of three girls, two of whom are opposing the other. The girl who is standing alone has her back to the spectator. Her exclusion is further symbolised by the dark tree between the girls, the stem of which divides into three: one branch above two others that are intertwined.
The pictures in Things Happen deal with the small chance events and the big choices, which for a moment can knock us off course. Sometimes the result is something better, sometimes something worse, but overall there is a change that can make us wiser, happier, sadder, more lucky or unlucky – all of which are a part of the life we live.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2007 Gallery Franz Pedersen, group
2007 Vilnius Painting triennial – Vilnius Contempoary Art Museum
2007 Art – Herning, group
2006 Janus Art Museum Tistrup, group
2006 Gallery Franz Pedersen Horsens, Outsiders” solo
2006 Galery Wolfsen, Ålborg, “ Sixteen Destinies” solo
2006 Art - Copenhagen, group
2006 Art - Herning, group



Andrew Foulds

Through exploring the historical qualities of paint and closely observing the detritus of our environment- discarded postcards, spoiled photographs, old horror film annuals and exercise manuals- Andrew Foulds strives to find what is at the heart of the current social and emotional condition. Juxtaposing strange dissonant characters that seek to mimic the epic personality defining creations of myth, he hopes to enliven a narrative that forces the viewer to confront the complexity inherent to notions of social interaction and isolation.

David Hancock

The focus of my work has been the idea of escapism, whether through youth subcultures or by directly referencing historical utopian visions. In my latest series of works, I have attempted to create a series of tableaux that discuss a variety of issues that effect young people. Partly inspired by the films of John Hughes and the ‘Brat Pack’ and their cynical attempts encapsulate the zeitgeist of the period; I have contrived a way of developing a body of work that embodies the experience of youth. As with my more recent work, these paintings are also drawn from a narrative base, which is supplied through a network of acquaintances and based upon real experiences sent to me as prose. It is my intention to create a continual narrative that runs throughout the body of work based around the relationships between a selection of individuals. They will feature either singly or as a group and be completely interchangeable, appearing randomly situations so that it will appear as though we are tracking the lives of a group of friends over a period of time, in a similar way to a soap opera. Their lives will become intertwined as their relationships commence or disintegrate.
Another key reference in my work is the signifiers taken from historical works of art. These are suggested in the work through the appropriation of composition, gestures or objects. The selection of these works is to allude to the narrative that forms the basis of the work. In a society marked by increasing mobility, my work reflects the desire for intimacy. I have chosen to create a Utopia within the fabric of my work that draws parallels between desires of the past and those present in our own society.

Solo Exhibitions:

2007 ‘How Can Someone so Young Sing Words So Sad’, Transit, Mechelen, Belgium
2006 ‘Who Will Eat my Sadness’, The Agency, London
2005 ‘The Beautiful People’, Leicester City Gallery

Selected Group Exhibitions:

2007 ‘Teenage Kicks’, Vegas Gallery, London
2006 ‘I-POD Killed the Video Star’, Showroomama, Rotterdam, Netherlands
‘I Ain't No Yesterdays News’, Gallery Likovni Krug, ExitFest, Serbia & Tour
‘Portreto Formate’, ARKA Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania & Tour


Andy Denzler

In view of current events and my ongoing examination of the virtual design process I have star­ted to pursue a new direction in my artistic expression. Photographic elements have started to appear in my hitherto abstract works of art and may find their most prominent expression in my latest portrait series. The blurring and the movement in these figurative works have been inspired by press photography and my fascination with the light effects of film, video stills and photogra­phy. The use of sepia in the black and white portraits enhance their photographic character as if they were historic images. The harmonic interplay between contrary tonal gradation, heavy and light forms, or dense and transparent textures requires subtle balancing. The inner balance of the works radiates at the same time stimulation as well as calm.
Affected by the new media my works may be associated with “New Paintings” and its tension between polar opposites, which have always influenced my work: between the individual and society, between freedom and order. My works respond to traditional portrait painting through an expressive and multilayered application of paint and the subsequent removal there of. The soft responds the hard, the smooth answers the rough. The identity of each protagonist is strengthened by the haptic/direct intervention. This makes the people who are portrayed appear much more vulnerable. Ultimately, it serves as a reminder to the vulnerability and transience/transitoriness of our existence.

There is something to be said for being by oneself. Such moments can provide freedom for con­templation, insight and
reflection. My paintings allows a viewer to enter into a private, psycho-geographic space. Each space, each canvasI I am painting suggest a type of psychological land­scape in which viewers might find themselves in – a desolate yet strangely passionate landscape that shapes itself through colour, time and mystical topologies.

Solo Exhibitions
2007 Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon
2006 Ruth Bachofner Gallery, Los Angeles
University of the Arts, London
Kashya Hildebrand, Zurich
2005 Kashya Hildebrand, New York
Galerie Raphael Rigassi, Bern
Mönchof Galerie, Wehrli, Kilchberg

Group Exhibitions
2007 Anticipation, One One One, London
2006 Frieze art fair, London
Kunst 2006, Zurich
2005 Galerie Wandelbar, Gstaad
Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, Geneva
2003 Art Basel 34, Basel

Tamsin Morse
Morse's landscape paintings have a deep relationship to the specific way in which they are made. Encompassing the action of drawing they come to exist in another world beyond nature. Their purpose is to suggest the real, content wise and compositionally, but with use of colour and line, create, on second glance, a fairly ominous and slightly sinister world. Morse sees much of her painting and drawing as a kind of writing; no more so than in the repetitive 'squiggles' within the work which she sees as a composition of an abstracted written narrative that formulates into a figurative element. For example, shaping areas of ground or bark with quick marks of the paintbrush, that are describing a form rather than painting it flat or tonally.The worlds she paints are initially inviting through their familiar genre and accessible colour. On closer inspection they become quagmires and inaccessible hostile environments that are uncomfortable and unwelcoming.

Solo Exhibitions

2006 One in the Other, London

Group Exhibitions

2007 Jerwood painting Prize, London
2006 Between a rock and a hard place: the Stone in Art, Rove, London Territory, Uni of Arts, London
Black Moon Island, One in the Other, London

The Singh Twins

Solo Exhibitions

2006 Masala Art; Anant Gallery, New Delhi, India. 7th-21st March 2006.
2005 Past Modern;The Singh Twins; major retrospective at The City Gallery, Leicester.
4th June - 9th July 2005.
2005 Past Modern:The Singh Twins; major retrospective at The Walker Art Gallery,
Liverpool. 22nd January - 17th April 2005.
2004 The Singh Twins; Derby City Museum and Art Gallery. 22nd September - 24th
October 2004
Group Exhibitions

2006 Two 2 Tango; Organised by Gallery Nvya but held at Lalit Kala Academi, New
Delhi, India, 15th-29th April.
2005 The Via Dolorosa Project; A multi-media presentation of the 'Stations of the Cross'
by artists of different faiths. St Mary's Church, Slough then touring. (An 'Art
Beyond Belief' initiative launched on 19th March 2005).
2004 Ritu:A Gathering of Seasons; Organised by Anant Art Gallery but held at Triveni
Kala Sangam, New Delhi, India. 8th - 17th January 2005.
2005 Faith; Nottingham Castle Museum.18th December 2004 - 13th February 2

Julian Lee

Although clear in subject, my paintings neither directly define nor specify, rather observe. There are no people but the human presence is always there. An early morning stroll through the still empty and quiet streets before the city awakes, or twilight before the night begins. That short experience for me is the city’s unconsciousness at it’s most visible and is where I’m tapping into.
To most city dwellers, the slow, gradual changing of the seasons is a miracle often ignored or taken for granted. Nature itself plays a major role in the work with seasonal change and its colours deciding my palette. I feel I owe it to the sheer beauty and diversity of nature to rendered it painstakingly in paint with an almost classical appreciation. A sort of romantic homage.
These paintings have a distinctively north European D.N.A. A reoccurring theme is that of Nature. To most north Europeans nature is a metaphor for a Society Utopia. To most English nature is considered a private sanctuary. Being English and living in the heart of Germany allows me to celebrate and explore both sensibilities.
Behind the „Europeaness lie more contemporary issues. Graffiti is random, relentless, pointless, sprayed everywhere, over anything, and on any available surface, including my canvases, which are also surfaces. Nature and Graffiti mirror each other, growing rapidly, obsessively fighting for space. Graffiti is part of the landscape, part of the painting.
Recent Exhibitions

2007 (Solo) Galerie Schuster, BERLIN
2007 Scope Art Fair, Basel

Future Exhibitions
2007 Live Visual Collaboration with musicians Wolfgang Flür (ex-Kraftwerk) and German band


John Stark

The uncanny and the sublime find their most cogent expression in contemporary visual culture in genres like horror and fantasy. John Stark's sombre black-and-grey paintings combine their imagery with the Romanticism's rhetoric of landscape. He underlines how the concerns and motifs of the 19th-century high culture continue to thrive in 21st-century popular culture and investigates the possibilities afforded by these subliminal continuities of Western culture."
The recent series of small paintings attempt to cater for an individual’s love of luxury in the same way as a goldsmith or furniture maker. I look back to painters like Salvator Rosa, Jan Fyt, Ruisdael, Bercham, and Friedrich. They are loosely referenced in the paintings through an intuitive process alongside various films, postcards, novels, comics and found images. The works themselves waver between the familiar and the unexpected, the melodramatic and the gothic, Romanticism and Death-metal."First of all, what is the Beautiful?
For Schelling it is the infinite expressing it self in the finite; for Reid, an occult quality; for Jouffroy an indestructible fact; for de Maistre what is agreeable to virtue; for Pere Andre what conforms to reason.
And there are several kinds of Beautiful; a beautiful in the sciences, geometry is beautiful; a beautiful in ethics, Socrates death is undeniably beautiful. A beautiful in the animal kingdom. A dog's beauty consists in its sense of smell. A pig could never be beautiful, given its filthy habits, nor a serpent, for it evokes ideas of baseness....In short the primary condition of the beautiful is unity in variety, that is the principle." -Gustave Flaubert, 'Bouvard and Pecuchet'

Recent Exhibitions

2007 Eau Savage II, Fieldgate gallery, London
Les Fleur Du Mal, Gallery Primo Alonso, London
New London Kicks, Soho House, New York