Michael West Gallery Quay Arts Sat 12 Dec 2009 – Sat 6 Feb 2010 Drinks Reception: Sat 12 Dec 2 – 4pm All Welcome

Open Exhibition 2008 winner; Julian Rowe explores and questions memory, repetition and narrative, through large scale installations.

At first sight Julian Rowe’s work resembles a decaying collection retrieved from the depths of some long defunct museum, though on closer examination, the objects contained in the battered cases are enigmatic, and their labels illegible. There seems once to have been a story, but its thread is now lost, like the contents of a faltering memory … or perhaps this is all fakery, the invention of the artist. Memories can be invented too.

Turn the Key Deftly brings together work made during the past five years. The touchstones of the individual pieces are from such diverse sources as Wagner and Conrad, Caspar David Friedrich and Sir Thomas Browne; the title itself comes from Keats. Rowe loves to rummage around in the cultural attic. His favourite part of the loft belongs to the Romantic period, though he makes forays into even dustier corners, and his plundering is not confined to the bric-a-brac of the visual arts but embraces the history of literature, music and ideas as well. Above all, though, he likes to conceal what he has found. There is a tension in Rowe’s work between brutish weightiness on the one hand, and sheer elusiveness on the other. He hides his treasures behind grimy glass, or in semi-darkness, so that the viewer is left trying to complete the story from their own imagination, or simply contemplating the poignancy of irretrievable loss.

Julian Rowe lives and works in Kent. An art school drop out, he worked in libraries and the Civil Service for many years while his creative life proceeded in fits and starts, until he summoned the wherewithal to devote himself to full time art practice in 1998. Since then he has exhibited frequently in the UK and elsewhere. He is currently studying for an MA in Fine Art at UCA Canterbury.

Turn the Key Deftly by Julian Rowe runs from: Sat 12 Dec 2009 – Sat 6 Feb 2010, Michael West Gallery, Quay Arts, Sea Street, Newport Harbour, Isle of Wight PO30 5BD