Wandering Star

‘Wandering Star’ is an exhibition of contemporary surrealism featuring two artists, Beth Carter and Aron Wiesenfeld, whose works respond to everyday alienation with narrative motifs that emerge from the depths of the imagination.

Beth Carter’s sculptures depict figures seemingly lost on an endless odyssey. Partly playful, they also have a deep sense of melancholy, as if the innocence of fairytales and childhood stories has worn thin through overuse. Dressing up, zoomorphism and hybrid states abound in Beth’s world. A horse-headed bronze figure dressed as a harlequin echoes Bottom from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, but he stands alone and forlorn. Accompanying figures dress in rags to become birds while children mask up as dogs in works that are shot through with bathos, their playfulness only serving to amplify darker currents. The sea and ships are frequent motifs in Beth’s works, as vessels for travellers towards an unknown, possibly unreachable destination. A dunce lies unconscious in a shoe like a castaway from an old tale. A group of figures huddle in a cramped little boat, all at sea with no direction or certainty. The theatre of Beth’s characters is reminiscent of Samuel Beckett and a sense of frustrated hope. These are fragile beings, innocent and playful, who have somehow become lost along their way.

Aron Wiesenfeld’s paintings describe lonely figures wandering the wilderness of contemporary suburbia. A girl sits on a bike beneath raw trees and before a misty estate; another rides her bike headlong into a dark tunnel with only a little lamp to light the way. Small fires and focused patches of light enhance the isolation, whilst also lending a sense of theatre that turns the suburban anonymity into a magical setting. A woman contemplating a fairground ride sparks the imagery of the girl on her horse crossing a landscape like a wanderer in an ancient fairytale. She rides through a carpet of leaves in a forest, stands silent beside a moonlit lake, wades through water, and rests by a fire… The motif is ancient, almost chivalric in its romantic drama, as seen in the figure that emerges from darkness, her horse dressed with a crown of flowers. It is a cryptic expression of an archetypal narrative that persists beneath the veneer of contemporary experience, that of the heroic journey beset with challenges, a quest of unknown destination.