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EVENT DESCRIPTION
SENS Gallery is pleased to announce Guardians of the Temple, the first solo exhibition of British painter Liam Alvy in Hong Kong. The exhibition will run from 9th June to 8th July 2023. ‘Guardians of the Temple’ is a new series of 18 paintings, featuring a recurring theme of dragons throughout the series. The dragons are painted with Liam’s signature subjects such as white tigers, black panthers, and spotted dogs.
Through bold and striking paintings which sometimes appear playful and in other compositions of mid-battle, an underlying theme of conquering your demons, or protecting what is yours, runs within the scenes of the ‘Guardians of the Temple.’ Creatures embody a dominating presence, their character defined as protective and striking in nature, yet energetic in manner. They encapsulate a sense of power and authority whilst being offered protection. Contrasting the resilience and protective demeanour of these creatures are cranes, symbols of beauty and eternal youth, providing feelings of calm and solitude amidst the chaos. The show is an allegory to overcoming difficulties in the face of adversity and to nature as a celebration of life, where nature is the fundamental ‘temple’ of the animal kingdom, existing as ‘guardians’ to protect themselves from danger.
Repetitive imagery and the combination of surrealism and folk art constitute Alvy’s creative style. Withdrawing from the traditional conventions of surrealism, Alvy applies it in a manner to create a balance between reality and imagination: the audience is explicitly familiar with the creatures depicted, yet they are portrayed in such an expressive manner that they appear more fantastical than reality. Alvy expands his expertise as a tattoo artist to the canvas, demonstrating his skills through sharp brushstrokes and contrasting colours. None of his works will evoke an identical image or feeling to them, he is constantly attempting to evolve his style and create something new.
Alvy has preferred to create his works by drawing with hand. To forge a close relationship between the painting and the viewer, he creates minimal distance between each layer of paint and the surface in his works. Influenced by animal encounters and animations in his childhood, he consistently attempts to create from his surroundings before gradually filling the canvas with spontaneous inclusions of objects or creatures within the background. The simple, striking colour palettes of Alvy’s paintings take inspiration from a variety of sources, from Old Americana paintings and circus posters to old pub signs and lettering. The emboldening patterns and carefully constructed compositions that accompany the fascinating animals and mythological creatures resemble their depictions in antique ornaments such as ancient Greek amphoras, as well as the lively animals that roam the verdant landscapes within Asian painting.
Liam Alvy’s ‘Guardians of the Temple’ showcases the vibrant, fierce demeanour of these creatures, protecting the lands they traverse and evokes feelings of power and security to the viewer by encouraging to conquer one’s demons and hardships. But they also personify the celebration of life, perhaps as an allusion to the artist’s own experiences with nature and his continuation to create from his surroundings.
ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER
Liam Alvy (b. 1987, Lincolnshire, UK) is a British painter based in Leeds. An artist from day one, Liam spent most of his childhood sitting around drawing at any given opportunity. After studying fine art at college and then photography at the University of Leeds, Liam began tattooing at the age of 23. This provided him the opportunity to work on his art daily and travel the world showcasing his work as he travelled.His initial inspirations came from nature books and obscure antiques he would find when visiting flea markets with his family as a child. Then at the age of 13, he discovered skateboarding where he began to merge the simple, striking graphics of skateboard artwork with the animals and characters he’d grown up drawing. Through a constant evolution of daily creations, from small pencil sketches, to large scale colour paintings, Liam’s work is now collected globally and sits in collections all over the world.
His work has been the subject of a solo exhibition, ‘Those fucking frogs, man’ at Screw Gallery (Leeds, 2022). He has also participated in several group exhibitions, such as ‘Works on paper’ at Tinimini Room Gallery (Netherlands, 2022), ‘Art in lockdown’ at Showhouse JayJay (Antwerp, 2021) and ‘A good sport and friends’ at The Factory (London, 2019). He will be showcasing his work at raking lights gallery in Los Angeles (March 2024) and at Heath Nock in New York (May 2024).
