Beehives

Location

Country: France
City: Paris
Place: British Embassy

Zoë Carlon is interested in experiences of solitude, and the spaces and circumstances where this can be experienced in our hyperconnected world. Working from her own photographs of places or scenes, she develops compositions with no narrative action or people yet that convey a sense of being in that space. Her use of particular viewpoints or manipulated perspectives create a lack of resolution as to what the place is and where we see it from. In Beehives we view a line of familiar looking objects, which we recognise from the title of the work but the three chunky, grey painted lines crossing horizontally through composition, suggest that we are seeing these from a particular vantage point, perhaps through a window from within an interior space or through some other barrier that removes us from the scene being depicted and asks us to orient ourselves. The scene we view is one of stillness yet we know that there is activity that we cannot see, in the hives. This sense of removal from the unpeopled, yet still active, scene invites us to explore the idea of solitude.

Zoë Carlon was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire. She graduated with a BFA from Leeds University in 2017 and went on for further studies to the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held by her gallery South Parade in Mexico City (2023) and London (2022) and her work has been included in group exhibitions including most recently at Super Super Markt, Berlin, Germany; What We Make Where at the Hyde Park Art Club, Leeds; AMP Gallery, London (all 2023); The Art House x The Ridings, Wakefield; Collected, Newcastle upon Tyne; and Tetley Associate Artist Studio Showcase (all 2022); Centre for Recent Drawing, London and Art Walk Wakefield (both 2021).

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

aluminium, paint, oil, oil paint, oil painting

Artist

Zoë Carlon (1993 - )

Title

Beehives

Date

2021

Medium

oil on aluminium

Dimensions

height: 42.3 cm; width: 34.3 cm; depth: 3.8 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from South Parade, February 2022

Provenance

South Parade, from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 14 February 2022

GAC number

19036