'Just Looking' - James Gemmill and Gavin Lockheart

Oxford Festival of the Arts is delighted to be working together with the Pembroke College JCR Art Collection to present “Just Looking” – an exhibition of the work of James Gemmill and Gavin Lockheart. There is a subliminal thread across these works – they play on different possible interpretations of stories told/untold – and that is what is fascinating about James’ and Gavin’s work.  They tell a story (or do they?), but that story is completely up to the viewer.  There is a darkness in some of the paintings, a link to horrors around us and man’s inhumanity to man, but is there a glimmer of hope? That is up to you. 

The exhibition is free to attend, and will run from Saturday 20th April to Sunday 28th April at the following times:

Artists will be in attendance each day the exhibition is open. There will be a private view on Friday 19th April from 6.30 - 9pm (RSVP here), and a talk with Sonja Klaus and artists James Gemmill and Gavin Lockheart on Thursday 25th April at 6.30 - 7.30pm.

See more details on the Pembroke JCR Art website.

James Gemmill

Oxfordshire-based artist James Gemmill has a wide-ranging artistic career, working in film, television, and design, as well as in the more traditional context of gallery artist.  He has been commissioned large works in the cinematic world, including the recreation of sections of the Louvre gallery for “The Da Vinci Code”; the theatrical set of the film “Anna Karenina”, the reproductions for “The Last Vermeer”, and “Glass Onion: A knives out mystery” just to name a few.  James studied at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City and at the University of Boston; after which he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in London. His work is held in a number of prestigious collections in different countries. Most recently, Gemmill’s work was exhibited at The Mall in London, at Old Brompton Gallery, South West London, and at New College Oxford, as part of Oxford Festival of the Arts – with whom he has established an ongoing partnership.  

Gavin Lockheart

Gavin Lockheart was born in the Midlands between picturesque countryside and the heavy industry of the Black Country. His paintings sit mostly within a generalised landscape genre but often with further imagery apparent on the surfaces; figures, faces, flowers, vehicles, buildings, drawn from a lifetime of taking pictures, not so much an imagined world as a reconstructed one. Rural features appear incongruously in the city; figures seem out of place in their environment, though seeping into it. The use of multi layered imagery throws the understanding of depth out of focus and sets up a scenario where the surface functions both as screen and as window.  Gavin studied at St. Martin’s and has shown in the U.S and Europe and in 2007 completed a nine story wall installation in Manchester. He lives and works in London.  Some of Gavin’s work can be viewed, by appointment, at the Artist Room, Great Chapel Street, Soho.