Date: 8. 9. - 29. 9. 2022
International project "The Calling" by 5 female artists Chantelle Goldthwaite, Yasmin Lambie-Simpson, Karen Lockert, Sheila Metcalf Tobin and Carol Walsh presents collective art exhibition "THE FEMININE JOURNEY". (8th - 29th September 2022)
Vernissage - 8th September at 19:00
Artist talk in english with the curator - 9th September at 18:00
Text by curator Hagai Segev:
An artist’s desire for creation is one that is hard to suppress due to the inner impulse for self-expression. However, another driving desire exists – to call out, reach out, and communicate with others. The Calling project by five international female artists is a call to create and reach out to others who have the mutual desire to share through art.
Art, being a silent language of the innermost feelings, is one of the best ways to express the ideas, emotions, and hopes a person has. As a silent and cross-cultural language, it is the best mode to communicate and join people and ideas. The Calling project in Prague is such an endeavor – to call out and reach out to unknown people and make new acquaintances through the works of art.
Through this two-year project, across continents, and Zoom meetings, each of the five artists was able to assemble and create her own project/series in her own workspace. The result is an exhibition by five individual artists who, by dialogue and mutual support at the time of the Covid pandemic, were able to communicate and find new ways of searching for their innermost ideas about contemporary life.
The sources of art and the understanding of the human condition fascinate the group, and each artist seeks to present her singular perspective and lifelong experience of her personal journey, based on nurturing, non-linear, and intuitive values. These are just some aspects of the dynamic in every woman’s life that find expression here.
The artists met for the first time in 2017 and 2018 through “The Becoming”, an art program by Canadian artist Jessica Serran based in Prague. The journey continued for each artist at her home-based studio in Australia, California, or Wales. Weekly and monthly conversations created the artistic community of discussions about the Feminine Journey and their artistic depictions of it. Chantelle Goldthwaite searches for the Medial and her connection between self and source in times of transformation. Carol Walsh attempts to uncover the veils, revealing facets of her life, and seeking to allow her light to be seen. Karen Lockert finds herself shedding and removing the skin of her past experiences and beliefs, hoping to soar out to the open world. Sheila Metcalf Tobin explores her emotional and physical Motherhood feelings and connections in herself and with her family. At the same time, Yasmin Lambie-Simpson flows with the element of water to understand the concept of travel to find a home.
This group named itself The Calling because they felt compelled to produce this work, which they entitled “The Feminine Journey.”
The resulting exhibition at Beseder Gallery in Prague is a unique experiment for the five artists. It is a special event that brings Prague a fascinating international project with artists across the globe. It is an opportunity to meet these artists face to face and talk about the basics of art and life, with less theory and more life experience. The Calling project is about connecting people, talking about what matters to each one, and giving space for bridging the gaps and the walls that have become too far and too high for people to dissolve easily. It is our wish to understand the fundamental values that lie beneath the veils and the skins and the dust of the current post-pandemic existence.
About the artists:
CHANTELLE GOLDTHWAITE
Chantelle Goldthwaite is a self-taught artist who lives and works in Northern California. Chantelle is fascinated by the world around her and seeks to explore, collect images and ideas, and then reassemble them as memorabilia of a pilgrim in this world. Inspired by the concept of alchemy and the Prague Feminine Journey, the collage works she exhibits are sourced from various print formats along with other scavenged ephemera.
The images that form the collages provide an opportunity to step out of boundaries we set for ourselves in Chantelle’s words: “The people, places, things, beliefs that sustain us and bring us comfort can become the things that end up holding us back. Not allowing ourselves to grow and change. And the most beautiful of experiences reside in some of the most overlooked places on our journey.”
YASMIN LAMBIE-SIMPSON
Yasmin Lambie-Simpson was born in England and studied and worked for 30 years in the United States; she is currently working and living in Wales.
Yasmin’s abstract works are like water flowing on the gallery walls. She regards Water “As the mystery that I have traveled through and across to find the people and places I call home.” The water depictions are the subject of Yasmin’s art, but art making is for her “the only thing that makes sense to me,” she says. The flowing lines and the combination of colors present a magical ensemble, lovingly interpreting the patterns of nature, conveying the pleasure of art making and the dialogue, which is an essential part of any communication.
SHEILA METCALF TOBIN
Sheila Metcalf Tobin is an artist and art instructor living and working in California.
The figurative drawings and collages by Sheila are a way by which she explores the emotional and physical connections constructing her inner and outer environments. The physical forms and the intentional painterly mode, reveal the emotional aspects and the psychological narrative, the unspoken idiom of art.
The loving drawing is like a mother’s caress conveying a sense of belonging, familiarity, and intimacy with the art, the people, and the images depicted. By drawing, Sheila recognizes and calls out for new relations between each and every member of her family, but also with nature around.
KAREN LOCKERT
At a very young age, Karen Lockert realized an artist was being born in her, since then she creates and teaches while living and working in California.
Art is here to explore the diversity of expressions offered by life experiences, Karen writes, “My work is very diverse, using everything from traditional media to fabric and found objects. And ideas. My work is always about ideas, concepts, and personal experience.”
Karen’s journey to Prague will present outfits worn in various circumstances: as an angel with hope, as a means of torture, or as a mask for protection. The daily outfits can be regarded as much more than the mundane and as a form of art.
CAROL WALSH
Artist and businesswoman, living and working in Australia.
Carol Walsh's paintings are inspired by the landscapes of Australia and her love for the flow of fabrics manifested in textile design. Her paintings of the Feminine Journey are like a journey of a woman’s body on the canvas. The body is made of water and depicts a landscape of feelings and emotions. The paintings present the harmony of body and nature, immersed, and affected by the ocean scenes she sees from her home. These are a major part of the elemental forces, seasons, and patterns, all of which are integrated into her painting.
