Due to the current lockdown restrictions our galleries are temporarily closed. We will update this page with further details about this exhibition as we have them. You can find more about our opening hours here >>

Artist Molly Rooke will use the gallery as a work-in-progress space as part of Exeter Phoenix’s Platform series, which offers artists based in the South West region opportunities to test out ideas, new work and recent developments in their practice, to explore its presentation and instigate feedback and discussion with others.

This project marks a lateral shift in Rooke’s practice, expanding into a multi-disciplinary approach as she works towards two solo exhibitions across the south west later in the year. This shift is the result of a period of research and development that explores themes of preservation, heritage and restoration through coastal geographies. Using traditional methods of domestic fixing and repair in an expanded form, Rooke will be focussing on the degradation and erosion of the Somerset and Devon Coastline and what might be considered futile attempts to protect it from being eroded any further.

Rooke’s practice has previously negotiated ideas of preservation and longing through collections of images and ephemera. She has utilised the material elements of tourism, such as souvenirs and postcards, in which printed, pictorial representations preserve collective and personal experience in time past and, as two dimensional images, become the focal point for perpetuating history and memory. By re-appropriating and disrupting existing archives, using processes of repetition and reproduction, she attempts to shift perspectives and manipulate the narratives that surround these items.

About The Artist

Molly is a Fine Art graduate of Cardiff School of Art and Design and has an MA in Printmaking from the Royal College of Art. Recent group exhibitions include Printabilities in Cologne and Marlborough, the New Wave touring exhibition and Size Matters Fringe Arts Bath. Her work is held in various collections including the British Museum and the Chelsea Library Special Collection, and she is a founding member of Sister, Sister a collective supporting female artists across the South West of England. 

molly-rooke.com

Main Image: Molly Rooke, Darned Coast