Four Star Review
****
The List - p65
The ground floor of Edinburgh's Kimpton Hotel has been transformed from a traditional hotel lobby into an abstract art experience. Created to celebrate International Women's Day, this anthology aims to explore freedom of bias and discrimination through an otherworldly collection of fluid pattern, vivid colour and assorted texture. Showcasing the vibrant work of three bright and bold young Scottish artists, the exhibition, by Upright Gallery is ‘celebrating the women on our walls' until end of July.
Daryl Terri Cooney's animated acrylic work lines the grey walls of the Kimpton's courtyard, adding a kaleidoscopic element to an otherwise conventional space. Cooney's fresh and quirky paintings work with shape, colour and pattern. Wondrous works such as 'Are The Glens Of The World Okay?' and 'The Hilltown Smells Of Noodles' are but a small selection of the artist's wackiest titles.
In contrast, 'First Blush' by Naomi McClure displays more muted tones with the pink, mauve and purple shades of oil-paint-on-panel creating a three-dimensional and unconventional piece that exhibits a variety of textures. McClure's art soothes the eyes after the sensory explosion of Cooney's work and creates a buoyant balance between the two.
The third artist of the Kimpton trio displays a fitting middle ground between Cooney's colour-crazed wonderland and McClure's blend of texture and tone. Emma-Louise Grady's lacing of dreamy patterns and plant-like shapes are formed by hundreds of intricate dots and lines made with acrylic paint and Posca pens. Similarly to her fellow artists, Grady uses shape, colour and texture to produce an abstract utopia in works such as 'Dreaming Of Fields And Frogs'.
Although a hotel lobby may not seem habitual for such an energetic display of nonfigurative art, our young female artists have no trouble transporting visitors from the mundane to the imaginary. Their collective work creates a free-flowing commemoration of women in the art industry.
Rachel Cronin