18 June – 17 July 2011
Fri - Sun 12-6pm
+ Launch of Garageland: Fake - Sun 17 July 3-6pm
 
Cathy Lomax Rachael Haines
This summer Transition Gallery travels offsite to present Mock Tudor at a venue alongside Ravenscourt Park in West London.
Mock Tudor takes the much-reviled Tudorbethan architectural style as a starting point for an examination into authenticity, influence and inspiration. Tracing the strands that a powerful historic story projects, the Mock Tudor artists evoke the passions of another era by transforming the banal, assimilating identities and creating alternative histories. The work in the show is not strictly faithful to any historic period or style. Instead, it promiscuously borrows and changes details to suit its makers’ purposes, just as history itself is altered and adapted to suit its teller.
Used to high-brow effect by the likes of Edwin Lutyens and the Arts and Crafts movement, Tudorbethan style now tends to be seen as a tasteless suburban pastiche with uPVC wood effect stucco boards creating ‘instant atmosphere’. The Tudor period is also currently popular on film and TV with the notable recent examples of the TV series The Tudors and the films The Other Boleyn Girl and Elizabeth.
Whilst Tudor revivals may ape the romantic style of a bygone age, however authentic, they ultimately reveal more about their own historic moment than the actual Tudor period.
   Alli Sharma Sigrid Holmwood Jeff McMillan
Kirsty Buchanan's film O Death, Rock Asleep is an exploration into trivial moments and the macabre details in the tales of four different Tudor Queens, each of whom met a violent end.
Rachael Haines creates a gaffa-taped, 'magpie' Tudoresque interior.
Sigrid Holmwood's drawings play with the concept of ‘intern’ in the contemporary art world and ‘apprentice’ of Tudor times, contributing to her investigative painting practice that includes re-enactments with The Tudor Group.
Cathy Lomax's Holbein inspired head-shots mix characters from Tudor themed movies with renaissance portraits and contemporary fashion imagery.
Jeff McMillan moved from Texas to the UK in the late 1990s and attempted Tudor-style paintings in an effort to assimilate. This is the first showing of these works.
Alli Sharma's paintings, inspired by an initial B necklace worn by Anne Boleyn, focus on pieces of jewellery that like an mock tudor facade shout their identities to the world
Charlotte Squire reconfigures domestic objects into illuminated sculptures.
The Tudor Cabinet of Curiosities is a collaborative project by Cathy Lomax and Alli Sharma and features a collection of Tudor inspired objects.
and a special guest appearance by Yoke and Zoom with their detourned caravan and trailer.
 
Kirsty Buchanan Charlotte Squire
Ravenscout Park is a perfect romantic location for Mock Tudor. The lake, in the centre of the park was once part of a moat that surrounded Palingswick Manor. Alice Perrers, a wealthy, educated, medieval woman, owned the manor during the 14th Century, and was mistress to King Edward III.
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