Bonita Helmer
James Scott
David Smith
HK Zamani
Derek Boshier
Colin Fraser Gray
Jeremy Kidd
Max Presneill
Philip Vaughan
David Eddington

Shatto Gallery is pleased to announce,Urban Paradise, a group exhibition of paintings and sculptures by ten artists based in the Los Angeles area; an exhibition serving as an epitaph to life in metropolitan Los Angeles during the pandemic.

 

Towers, domes, temples and churches form a community in close proximity that has many benefits: the ability to share infrastructure and facilities, their centres of excellence, the galleries, universities and other cultural institutions, places giving a chance to breathe and reflect, services, specialists, jobs, a lower environmental impact, a catalogue of goodies. The city contains more than we will ever know.

 

With the pandemic’s proliferation, we are unable to partake in the valuable facilities this large metropolitan area provides. A busy city also comes with its issues even in less iffy times,

we endure many of the disadvantages which consequently are thrust to the forefront: pollution, traumatic incidents, growing homelessness, racial tensions, even our overexposure to social interaction, accosted from all corners, it seems a civic spawning ground for monsters.

 

Los Angeles is beautiful, but a grim beauty; we allow ourselves to become desensitised to the daily pressures. A city machine for living purely in the present tense, do people really thrive when they cluster, now we have a wake-up call, for in many ways we deserve worse, we have raped and mindlessly pillaged the planet, suburbia sprawl’s into the surrounding landscape breaking down the interface between flora, fauna and humans.

 

We are tentively anticipating the fading of the pandemic; the duration has been protracted with massive numbers falling by the wayside, no opportunity for consolation for the dying or the grieving. Human kind is flawed; we all bare blame for our demise.

 

Big issues, a small way, reflection on this past period and the craziness of city life; this exhibition is a transitional platform, a look at how a group of artists has confronted these dark times, exposed nerve-endings and vulnerability to create an optimistic epitaph to city dwelling with lessons learnt, the silver lining of Covid. 

 

“No witchcraft, no enemy action, had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world, the people had done it themselves.” Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962).

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Curatorial Team

David Eddington

Yujin Iris Jeong