Oriele Steiner’s work explores a wide array of painting techniques and processes, using colour and light as the dominant means of experimentation. She is interested in a palette’s ability to evoke emotion, whether through its direct, singular use or via juxtaposition and dissonance.

Her paintings are deliberately layered with conflicting emotions – she wishes to place whimsical moments on stage for the world to see, like single frames taken from a comic strip; whilst her compositions imply they exist as part of a larger story, the task us with considering a particular moment.

The compositions are derived from Steiner’s very “British” sense of humour – simultaneously comical and dark; surreal yet totally, relatedly human. Fears and taboos leap out of the work, imagery and motifs from personal moments transform themselves in the viewer’s mind, Oriele asking us to judge whether the privacy of these moments is intimate or gross – perhaps a more traditional British comedian would quip “what’s the difference?”

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Oriele Steiner’s work explores a wide array of painting techniques and processes, using colour and light as the dominant means of experimentation. She is interested in a palette’s ability to evoke emotion, whether through its direct, singular use or via juxtaposition and dissonance.

Her paintings are deliberately layered with conflicting emotions – she wishes to place whimsical moments on stage for the world to see, like single frames taken from a comic strip; whilst her compositions imply they exist as part of a larger story, the task us with considering a particular moment.

The compositions are derived from Steiner’s very “British” sense of humour – simultaneously comical and dark; surreal yet totally, relatedly human. Fears and taboos leap out of the work, imagery and motifs from personal moments transform themselves in the viewer’s mind, Oriele asking us to judge whether the privacy of these moments is intimate or gross – perhaps a more traditional British comedian would quip “what’s the difference?”

Follow Oriele on Instagram

Oriele Steiner’s work explores a wide array of painting techniques and processes, using colour and light as the dominant means of experimentation. She is interested in a palette’s ability to evoke emotion, whether through its direct, singular use or via juxtaposition and dissonance.

Her paintings are deliberately layered with conflicting emotions – she wishes to place whimsical moments on stage for the world to see, like single frames taken from a comic strip; whilst her compositions imply they exist as part of a larger story, the task us with considering a particular moment.

The compositions are derived from Steiner’s very “British” sense of humour – simultaneously comical and dark; surreal yet totally, relatedly human. Fears and taboos leap out of the work, imagery and motifs from personal moments transform themselves in the viewer’s mind, Oriele asking us to judge whether the privacy of these moments is intimate or gross – perhaps a more traditional British comedian would quip “what’s the difference?”

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Relation, displacement, multiplicity, identity, interdependency, and language emerge from melissandre’s work. Making from an Afro and Caribbean diasporic context, melissandre add layers of complexity using a situated Black feminism. Through poetic performance arts, moving image assemblages, and site-specific installations – among other things – melissandre interrogates how the encounter between bodies that have been marginalised, everyday materials, and institutional spaces transgresses normativity.

Commissioned nationally and internationally, melissandre co-parents two-year-old Eole. They currently work on B.O.O.K, a healing (art, library, rest) station supported by Coventry Biennial; co-organising transnational afrofeminist performances; curating Open Calls as part of Studies in Theatre and Performance; and are an artist-resident and advisory board member at Coventry Artspace.

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Catherine Cleary is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer, working in video, text, drawing, and painting. Exploring personal narrative, visionary imagery, and their relationship to the outside world, her work often uses layering and chance in multiple media to repurpose imagery and find new meanings.

Lockdown has brought about a widening use of online platforms for mentoring, peer review, professional development, and course learning, which has improved opportunities for artists with access barriers. This has enabled Catherine to develop writing and in particular poetry as an important part of her practice.

During the past year this has led to new video work experimenting with the combination of poetry and moving image. One of these new works, Personal Independence Payment Face-to-face Assessment, is exhibited here at Shape Open 2021.

Through poetry and film Catherine is seeking ways to articulate, for the first time, her experience of chronic illness and disability.

In 2018 Catherine was a shortlisted artist for the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary. She studied BA Fine Art (Painting) at UCA (Farnham) and MA Fine Art (Painting) at City and Guilds of London Art School, was a correspondent at Turps Art School for two years and in 2018 was awarded a Drawing Intensive at the Royal Drawing School. Catherine has exhibited widely both as a solo artist and with video work as a collaborative artist. She worked as a curator for Art:Language:Location 2016, Cambridge. Her most recent show was Feeling for Murmuration at APT Gallery in December 2020.

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