Parham Ghalamdar in conversation with Jenny Eden
Thursday 20 February 6:30pm
Workplace Foundation
The Old Post Office
19-21 West Street
Gateshead
NE8 1AD
Artist Parham Ghalamdar will discuss their practice and current exhibition at Workplace Foundation with lecturer, researcher and artist, Jenny Eden.
Painted in intense acidic colour, surreal forms and structures inhabit desolate and empty landscapes. Uncanny and strange these objects adhere to rigorous placement, assimilating elements drawn from a diverse range of Western and Middle Eastern Art History such as Caravaggio, Goya, Bouguereau, Soviet Socialist realism, graffiti, pop culture and traditional Persian miniatures.
Parham Ghalamdar’s works switch between the aesthetics of realism and the cartoon. Through this absurdist strategy Ghalamdar obfuscates narrative enabling the painting to stand alone, resistant to a didactic reading. The considered, rational structuring of his paintings stand as a counterpoint to the oppressive weight of dogmatic ideology that Parham experienced in his homeland.
Jenny Eden is a painter and researcher based in Salford. She lectures in Fine Art at Manchester School of Art and co-runs Oceans Apart, a gallery in Salford dedicated to contemporary painting. Her paintings are psychologically driven, giving attention to process, the painting’s communicable potential and the complex exchange between painter and painting. Imbued with psychoanalytic thinking, and the exploratory nature of Sigmund Freud’s early psychological investigations, Jenny’s paintings inform a body of research which examines the interrelatedness of two previously independent philosophies – New Materialism and Psychoanalysis – from the position of a painter.
Jenny is currently studying a By Practice PhD in Painting at Manchester School of Art, following an MFA in Fine Art also from Manchester (2017). Other qualifications include an MA in Art Psychotherapy from Leeds Metropolitan University (2006), a PGCE in Art and Design from the University of Surrey, Roehampton (2001) and she graduated with a BA in
Fine Art from Birmingham School of Art (2000).
Notes to Editors
Contact:
Miles Thurlow
Co-Founder and Director
miles@workplacefoundation.art
About Workplace Foundation
Workplace Foundation is a contemporary art organisation based in Gateshead, UK.
We support emerging and under-represented artists with a commitment to UK art scenes outside of London, with a focus on the North of England.
We are a registered charity, and are core funded by Arts Council England as part of their National Portfolio of Organisations.
Further information on Simeon’s show at Workplace Foundation can be found here
