UN | VEILED: June 2021

UN | VEILED presents two brilliant female artists, at the beginning of their careers and new to the Brocket portfolio, with a series of paintings and monotype prints that encapsulate Brocket’s unique ethos of championing artists who use their materials and technique to reinterpret and reimagine narratives of (art) history or art historical practice for contemporary audiences.  

Zimbabwean Artist, Tanaka Mazivanhanga showcases I Dream of Freedom, a collection of vivid textural prints exploring the conflicting senses experienced while visiting the former slave castles of Ghana. A trained architect before moving in to fine art, Mazivanhngna attempts to visually articulate her feelings witnessing the impressive architectural structures against the tropical blue ocean, while navigating the harrowing atrocities that took place within them. The artist collaborates with the Ghanaian poet, Amma Ofusu to bring written and spoken word to her work. 

“The layering of material, texture, colour and form is what I was immediately drawn to in Tanaka’s work. To bring in written and spoken word beautifully demonstrates the sensitive excavation she has undergone in developing and interpreting her research, while exploring the rawness of the distressing remnants in these castle dungeons.” Lizzie Glendinning, Brocket Gallery Director 

New rising star, Eleanor May Watson, showcases large-scale paintings and watercolour monotypes that transcend time and art history through a new eye and post-feminist approach to reimagining the domestic sphere. These abstract pieces, executed with the exquisite technical ability that makes her work so coveted right now, embody a romance and fluidity that reinterprets the late 19th century genre for contemporary art lovers.

“There are so many layers to Eleanor’s practice that comment on social history, time and decay, that the artist aims to articulate and transcend through her evocative pieces. I couldn’t be more thrilled to begin this new partnership with such an inspirational artist.” Lizzie Glendinning

UN | VEILED not only presents, or unveils, these two magnificent young artists, it also revisits and reveals hidden histories, art-histories, unspoken pasts, truths or interpretations. It ultimately encapsulates a significant moment in contemporary art practice for these artists to unveil their own unique voices using a meticulously honed artistic language.

UN | VIELED has been curated in collaboration with Mollie E Barnes, Curator, and Founder of @she_curates_, which champions equality in the arts and celebrates women and queer artists. Mollie has featured both Tanaka and Eleanor on her celebrated blog and continues to champion their individual artistic journeys. 

This exhibition has been made possible with the generous help of The Crown Estate

Preserving memories of spaces and surfaces that the artist feels might one day be lost is the essence of her practice, Tanaka Mazivanhanga’s work documents the surfaces, textures, marks and fragments of overlooked and forgotten relics of the urban landscape. 

“I aim to draw out the details of the mundane and the everyday; to bring details and aspects to the observer that they would not have previously acknowledged due to an automated familiarity.” 

Tanaka’s work aims to evoke curiosity from the viewer by urging them to slow down, to consider things they would otherwise not engage with, or to reconsider their own ‘familiar’. Rather than describing spaces, she challenges perceptions by presenting them in an unfamiliar way, explored through three main focus areas - printmaking, casting and object making.

In 2016, Tanaka visited Ghana for the first time and became highly invested in uncovering the country’s colonial past, especially after visiting the Slave Castles along the Gold Coast. She wanted to make a body of work to reflect her initial experience and decided to go back in 2020 to undertake a month-long self directed residency. 

Her research focused on Osu, Almena, and Cape Coast Castles, all of which she found beautiful architecturally, but the sinister histories they housed created that uncomfortable viewing she has worked hard to visually articulate. 

I Dream of Freedom, the powerful new series created in response to her time in Ghana is presented for the first time with Brocket Gallery London. Focusing on the histories, remnants and stories evident in the fabric of the castles, through the documentation and exploration of surfaces and textures, the series aims to capture the journey and the untold stories and of the slaves. This body of work was created in collaboration with Poet, Amma Ofosu.

Tanaka was born in Zimbabwe, and is now based in London. She holds a BA in Architecture from Kingston School of Art, and an MA in Printmaking from Camberwell College of Art where her work was awarded the Bainbridge Studio Award and selected for The Clifford Chance Postgraduate Survey Show. In 2019, she exhibited at the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair where she won the East London Printmakers award for her large scale site specific installation. She recently launched a limited edition collection of wallpaper and textiles in collaboration with Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair for their Woolwich Contemporary Studio collection, and has an exclusive print as part of their Woolwich Contemporary Editions programme.

This body of work began in 2020 with a series of small watercolours. They became the artist’s refuge in colour and material from otherwise feeling enclosed. The oil paintings are informed by the freedom and fluidity of painting in watercolour and have moved further towards abstraction, influenced by the watercolour monotypes.

“I began to allow for more time spent in the movement of paint: watching for moments of meaningful coalescence.”

Eleanor returns to images of home and domesticity to create paintings in which to contemplate memory, longing, desire and belonging. Reinterpreting the domestic genre or capturing that mis-en-scene, the series encapsulates a dynamic, modern painterly aesthetic, yet brims with a deep sense of thoughtfulness, hidden stories, absent figures.

Eleanor completed her masters in Fine Art at City and Guilds of London Art School in 2019 where she was awarded the Slaughterhaus Print Prize and the ACS Studio Prize. Prior to this Eleanor has exhibited widely nationally and internationally, in New York, Miami and Amsterdam. Eleanor was the winner of the Jonathan Vickers Fine Art Award in 2017, culminating in a solo exhibition at the Derby Museum and Art Gallery. Previously, Eleanor was awarded a place on to the Drawing Year at the Royal Drawing in 2016. In addition, since graduating from Wimbledon College of Art in 2012 Eleanor was shortlisted for Futuremap Prize (2012), the Young Masters Art Prize (2014), and the Jerwood Fellowship (2015).  In 2020 Eleanor was commissioned by Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair to create a limited edition large-scale frieze as part of Woolwich Contemporary Studio, which redultied in Other Echoes Inhabit the Garden, a 12 x 3m monotype depicting the canpus at Hadrian’s Villa in Rome.