Clare Rojas – We They, We They

Ikon Gallery, 1 Oozells Square, Birmingham. 0121 248 0708

ikon-gallery.co.uk

3 February – 21 March 2010

Free entry

The beautiful folk-inspired work of Clare Rojas comes to the Ikon as the gallery presents the first UK museum exhibition by the American artist.

Using a wide range of media, including painting, installation and print-making the exhibition, comprising much new work, marks a shift in Rojas’ practice. Paintings of empty domestic interiors suggest people have just departed, leaving clues of their identities, subtle revelations of gender and class.

The paintings will form centrepieces in a larger installation that is the entire exhibition, walls of the gallery covered by a patchwork of painted panels akin to a quilt.  Some are focused on particular imagery; others are assemblages of colour and pattern. They combine to recall a myriad of references from West Coast modernism, to Latino folk or Native American craft, outsider art and street graffiti.

Ikon’s Tower Room will contain paintings on antique banjos, drawing together Rojas’ musical and literary interests. There will also be a concert in which the artist will perform songs taken from her albums released under the name of her alter-ego Peggy Honeywell. See ikon-gallery.co.uk for performance date.