Karen Melvin

Karen Melvin was a lecturer in photography at Cleveland College of Art and Design, Middlesbrough for fifteen years and has been a member of Northern Arts Photography Panel. She was prize winner in Open Up North, Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal and was selected for the Great North Art Affair and Exhibition Borealis at Flowers East Gallery, London. Solo exhibitions include Flying Falling, the Customs House, South Shields, 2017; Way Down South: End of the Road, Upper Fusion Gallery, South Shields, 2017; Sisters, Art at 830, Key West, Florida, 2010; Paper Dolls, Myles Meehan Gallery, Darlington, 2005; Constellation, MAC Centre, Birmingham, 2004; All Heaven and Earth, Tom Blau Gallery, London, 2001 and Pride 2000, Millennium Dome, London.

Group shows include No.3, installation, High Green Arts, Tarset, 2018; Dennis Kilgallon Gallery, Northumberland, 2017; Open Up North, Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal, 2014; Margins, Queens Hall, Hexham, 2013; 28: A Celebration of the Myles Meehan Gallery, Darlington, 2012; Dover Prize, Darlington, 2010; Water, Queens Hall Arts Centre, Hexham, 2009; Bridging, (touring to Brisbane, Australia), 2008; Thinking the Unthinkable, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland, 2005; The Unlimited Dream Company, The Biscuit Factory, Newcastle, 2005 and New new, Kent Gallery, Key West, Florida, 2005.

I walk, garden, and make things each day with a sense of time trailing, learning by exploring and tending to the environment. I mix paint, pencil, and photography, constructing imagery from an association of birds, flowers, people, rocks, trees, surfaces. Part of the narrative that has emerged is a sense of protectiveness for the land, the elements and creatures associated with our eco-system, birds, trees, the cycle of water and carbon, and how it has gone amiss. Working locations include old quarries and mined out areas, ancient woodland scraps left behind from farming, where the landscape has a very particular sense of place, often a ruined landscape trying to recover. I ask myself, how will the wider landscape and we who are dependent on it cope with future catastrophe.