three painters

patrick bradley
julius guzy
peter hughes

exhibition previews 8pm saturday august 5
exhibition runs until august 26

Context Galleries is delighted to present a Summer show of recent work by three painters based in Derry. Patrick Bradley, Julius Guzy, Peter Hughes each last exhibited with the Context as part of the Maiden City Festival 2005. At that time Peter Hughes was awarded a commission from the festival. This Summer exhibition gives an opportunity to view a larger selection of the artists’ works.

Patrick Bradley
Patrick Bradley is an artist and gallerist who has been active in Derry for over twenty years. He has created several temporary exhibition spaces in the town for contemporary art.
He studied at Belfast Art College 1984-1987; is co-founder of Redemption! art gallery in Derry 1988; founder of Strike! art gallery in Derry, 2000. His most recent solo exhibition was at the Work House Museum, Derry, 2004.

My work is organic in nature, there are usually no preset ideas. I start with marks, gesture and colours, letting them develop, trusting the knowing nature of the mind unclouded by thoughts, aiming for a balance, a ‘rightness’.

Peter Hughes
Peter Hughes studied at Belfast College of Art 1995-96 and Exeter College of Art 1996-98. His work has been exhibited in Germany frequently over the last 20 years. Recent exhibition include The Gasyard, Derry; a major show in the Context in 2003; and in 2005 an award from the Maiden City Festival Commission, for his work in a group exhibition at the Context.

My paintings represent a search for a form of visual energy.
‘A seeking of charisma within the self
A seeking of the self within the world’

Julius Guzy
Julius Guzy has lived and worked in Derry since 1988. His work is viewable on his website, juliuspaintings.co.uk Since June 2003 he has been teaching himself to draw figures directly from his imagination and since June 2005 his pictures have become overtly political. In most cases their titles tell you exactly what they're about.

He will be exhibiting the following:
A large (90 x 64 cm) sketch for a painting entitled: the genocide in Rwanda represented as a large satyrical papier mache sculpturein the Passeo de las Germanias in Gandia, Spain. (In Valencian Spanish, Falla is a word which means "a thing of no value")

Sketch for a painting about the Separation Wall built by the Israeli govenment entitled: How we pacified our genocidal neighbours.

An anti-war against Iraq christmass card, with holy family and the three kings, camels and shepherds, head hooded by canvass bag Iraqi father and child, soldiers and rest of the world watching television, exploding people, burning figures fleeing the bombing of Babylon, and the heavens happilly spinning without a care for what we do.

A set of sketches concerning global warming, flying spaghetti monsters and pirates including a major watercolour sketch for a painting of Pirates attacking Tower of Babel.

A painting entitled Our garden of Eden or the cities of Babel bombing the world, their buldozers uprooting trees and flattening and burning the planet, the shooting in June 2006 of Bruno: one of the last brown bears in Europe, the wanton anihilation of all the animals including the killing by hanging of a giraffe, our children breaking young trees and stamping on snails, and Julius caught in the flames of creative passion painting landscapes.

Then if there is the space for it, he will be showing a work in progress: a reconstruction of a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci entitled the Battle of Anghiari, which Julius believes to be a satirical work about the glorification of war.