What: IRON MAIDENS: A portrait show by Arlea Ashcroft - Curated by Hugh Conacher
When: Thursday, Feb 11 Opening Night Reception from 7pm-10pm - W/ musical guest Romi Mayes
Show Runs from February 11 - March 14, 2010
Where: High Octane Gallery in the Gas Station Theatre - 445 River Ave at Osborne St.
Who: Arlea Ashcroft is a visual artist, filmmaker, and performer residing in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
This is her first solo art showing.
Website: www.arleaashcroft.ca
Contact: 295-8819 cell aea@mts.net
IRON MAIDENS a portrait series of women who make their own rules.
Artist’s Statement
IRON MAIDENS is a portrait series culled from my experience regarding women. For most of my adult life I’ve been surrounded by and worked almost exclusively with men. They have been my peers, my lovers, my confidantes, my mentors, my drinkin’ buddies, and my inspiration. I’ve been ‘one of the guys’, a title that I’ve always reveled in and been proud of.
In the past I didn’t really have many close women friends. Too be quite honest I didn’t want to. I found my relationships with women to be based on a strange passive aggressive dance filled with the overly wrought emotions of Cinderella wannabes or shrouded in a slut/whore syndrome more akin to competitiveness than companionship. I believed that women competed indirectly with other women because they had not learned how to recognize and channel their internal desires, feelings and goals into physical, tangible realities and used their insecurities to victimize themselves and make life hellish for others.
The IRON MAIDENS series of paintings is founded on the unraveling of self, beliefs, attitudes, and acceptance regarding the sisterhood. They are portraits of women I find myself surrounded by, that I respect, admire and am fascinated with. It all starts with a snapshot that strikes my fancy, which evolves into an exaggeration of the essence of each subject on canvas. The medium, style and composition of each work is dictated by what I feel the subject wishes to reveal to me. Alternatively, each portrait forces me to recognize those different aspects within myself. Each piece then becomes rooted in my own anecdotal and mythological meanderings laced with just a hint of cyanide.
My work strips away the glossy façade of the centuries-old convention of idealized femininity. The women portrayed are not shrinking violets, they are exploding with emotion, passion, and action seething beneath their flesh and boiling over on to the canvas. These are women of the new world. Bold, powerful and passionate they don’t play by rules they make their own. They confront the order of society and their place in it. Using their tragedies, insecurities, and troubled psyches as an experience, rather than the limit of their existence. They wear their fears like badges of honour wrapped in a dark and twisty sense of humour and move on all balls forward.
This show is dedicated to all the women who come out fighting everyday to make their presence known. They scream, they hurt, they love, they are human, they are my muses, they make me a better person, they are my IRON MAIDENS.
Artist Bio
Arlea Ashcroft is a self taught multi-disciplinary artist involved in the media, performing, and visual arts. She has received local, national and international exposure through publication, broadcast and public presentation.
As a short film Director, Arlea has been a recipient of the NSI Drama Prize and her short films have been broadcast and screened across Canada, overseas and more recently at IMAGES Festival of Independent Film in Toronto. She worked as a Best Boy Electric for over 10 years with IATSE 856, traversed the planet as Gaffer on the TV series World’s Greatest Spas and has written articles for Canadian Society of Cinematography magazine.
Ashcroft’s greatest performance to date has been as guitarist Battered Shrimp with the now defunct all chick punk band SHRIMP. Together for 6 years, Shrimp was the subject of a nationally aired CBC short doc, became media darlings and released two albums, Peel N’ Eat (2006), Smell My Finger (2009). Ashcroft has also toured Canada’s fringe festival circuit as an actor with the Goddess Rising Theatre company, collaborated with TRIP Dance company, and appeared in / voiced, over 70 stage productions, film, radio, and television spots.
Arlea’s illustrative work has toured to Brighton England, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Milan, Italy and been featured in international publication SubTerrain Magazine. In 2006 she designed/painted the set for the Aboriginal Music Awards show. Her paintings have shown at a multitude of group showings around Winnipeg and have been purchased by the Provincial Art Bank. Most recently Arlea was interviewed as a featured artist for the MTS TV on Demand series The Artist Next Door: Point Douglas Episode.
IRON MAIDENS is Arlea Ashcroft’s first solo showing.
For more information on the artist and to view other work please visit www.arleaashcroft.ca
IRON MAIDENS has been generously sponsored and supported by Curator Hugh Conacher, The Gas Station Theatre and The Crazy Maiden Rock Shop.
Thanks to my friends and family who have encouraged me with special thanks to Andrea, Jolyn, Kim, Mandy, Mia, Rea, Romi, and especially my sweet soul sister Angela for putting a brush in my hand and teaching me how to paint it out.
All my heartfelt gratitude to my partner in life, Mike, who has supported me through thick and thin, on this endeavor to realize my dream.
