Thread exhibition at Omnibus

12:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Saturday, July 1, 2017 - Monday, July 31, 2017

Omnibus

New paintings, prints and sculpture by Ruth Dupré and Ruth Franklin. The works in this show are a celebration of almost forty years of enduring friendship between two artists with similar impulses.

Both artists walk a fine line between abstraction and figuration. Both use colour and manipulate their materials and chosen themes with a zestfulness and freedom, often missing from the kind of conceptual work that is mistakenly regarded as the essential art of our times. Both show an audacious and winning disregard for the facile dictates of fashion. Both range widely and wildly in their themes. The work of both possesses a no holds barred exuberance and humour. It is spirited, lively and iconoclastic.

The two Ruth’s first began to work alongside each other at the Barbican Arts Group nearly forty years ago. Four years ago they decided to share a common studio space yet again – in part in appreciation of the benign influence they had upon each other as makers. The works in this show are the fruits of this second coming together. The themes of the works range from observation of the natural world in all its variety, to the inescapable bonds of family.

Both artists have exhibited widely, nationally and internationally. They have work in major public collections, including the V&A Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the Cornel Museum of Glass in New York. Both taught at major London art schools including the Royal College of Art, Camberwell and Central St Martins Schools of Art.

Ruth Dupre won the International Bombay Sapphire prize for glass in 2003 and the Royal Academy’s Jack Goldhill Award for sculpture in2010.She has work in major public collections, including the National Portrait Gallery and the Cornell Museum of Glass, New York.

Ruth Franklin has work in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Paisley Museum Scotland, Royal Museum of Scotland, Ulster Museum and the Crafts Council

Free entry