EXTREME

Curated by Roman Road’s Creative Director Marisa Bellani, EXTREME has been conceptualised as an evolving group show, responding to the gallery’s long-standing intention to bolster the significant and distinctive talents of ultra-contemporary artists, while providing them with a creative outlet for visibility and growth. Featuring four emerging artists, with four individually curated presentations, the exhibition showcases new and unique works by Joe Bloom, Channatip Chanvipava, fuchsia and Rose Raine. Week by week, each artist will respond to the gallery space, using its architecture to enhance the interpretation and reception of their works. Primarily comprising large-scale paintings, together with smaller canvas works, sketches and installation objects, the displays have been carefully conceived to create an immersive environment that transports viewers through a journey into the artist’s creative process and mind. EXTREME invites viewers to address humanity’s need to intensify experience through taste and action, speed and chemical reactions. What happens when we slow down, take some time to contemplate and let ourselves float? What if we become a butterfly escaping a crowd? What breakthrough do we experience when we stare at the clouds?

Joe Bloom: Revolving Door | 28 June – 02 July

Opening: Wednesday 28 June, 6 – 8 PM

With a passion for storytelling, Joe Bloom presents meticulously detailed and figurative paintings embodying magic realism. Drawing the viewer’s eye inward through his clever use of perspective, he invites us to take a step forward into his imagined scenes, full of familiar yet nuanced subjects and activities. Through correlating installation elements, he wittingly grounds his paintings to our reality, and at once our actuality to the world of his own making. Just follow the butterflies.

Channatip Chanvipava: 2 Chairs 1 Life | 05 – 09 July

Opening: Wednesday 05 July, 6 – 8 PM

In his paintings, Channatip Chanivpava orchestrates colour, emotion and movement as a means of communication and connection, in search of finding balance in moments of personal reflection. 2 Chairs 1 Life tells an intimate story of identity and self-growth. Through his large-scale abstract and richly textured piece, encompassing layers and iterations of colour, symbolisation and thought, he unfolds his emotions and works through a difficult and unspoken truth, bearing on intergenerational relationships, familial dynamics and filial piety. 

fuchsia: post-paradise | 12 – 16 July

Opening: Wednesday 12 July, 6 – 8 PM

With her new and shimmering works in post-paradise, fuchsia entices us into chimeric dreamscapes, full of cherubim angels, alluring marine creatures and flourishing plant life. Brimming with symbols of purity and refinement, she has developed a unique visual vocabulary to explore ideas of regeneration and growth, on the extreme other side of the current climate crisis. The orchid, representing beauty and love, is a key and recurring symbol in fuchsia’s latest paintings, one that is also redolent of her childhood in Hong Kong. With her works, fuchsia aims to encourage viewers to reawaken and reflect on ecological consciousness, opening up a dialogue that she hopes will transcend the viewing space.

Rose Raine: Breakthrough | 19 – 23 July

Opening: Wednesday 19 July, 6 – 8 PM

Inspired by British Romanticism, Rose Raine dedicates her practice to capturing the light, contrasts, and motions of the sea and sky. Growing up by the coast, Raine’s work is greatly informed by her understanding and individual perspective of the landscape. The atmosphere created through her palette, brushstrokes and compositions speaks to an emotional realisation of being a part of something greater, and whole. There is an acknowledgement to the significance of the artist's deep-rooted, unwavering and personal connection to her subject, and its consequent immeasurable impact on her work. Featuring an impressive triptych and an enlarged detail painting, together with a wall-mounted composite piece comprising 16 painted sketches, Breakthrough showcases her latest body of work, encircling visitors with the atmospherics of the blue while also providing a first-time glimpse into her process of making.