An exhibition of artworks by three artists, Naqsh Raj, Fiona Moate and Vic Wright opens at Mura Ma Art Space on Friday 8 March.
Titled, ‘Holding Up’ the exhibition draws together three artists devoted to process, place and form—Fiona Moate, Naqsh Raj, and Vic Wright—who have each developed their own visual language in their art-making, be it painting or sculpture. Opening on the eve of International Women’s Day 2024, the theme of this exhibition has been inspired by the book of illustrations and writing by American artist Maira Kalman, called ‘Women Holding Things’.

The late Fiona Moate’s paintings explore an interplay between historic 19th and 20th century architecture and natural and formal landscape. The looseness of her paintings, often using the beautiful, powdery softness of gouache on paper, belie a sophisticated painterly understanding. Her sketchbook drawings, often made whilst travelling on buses from her Stockport home and on walks around her local park during the pandemic, record acutely observed and unaffected glimpses of urban spaces. These provide fertile ground for paintings patchworking histories of place, and borrowed texts from the ‘The Kings England’ series by Arthur Mee, to reinforce her own discovered meaning.

Naqsh Raj is a painter who recently returned to Pakistan after living in the UK for two years. Her rhythmic compositions on large scale canvases are the result of a painstaking process of building and restoring order to her work. Raj believes in the strong connection between visual aesthetics and ethics, both in a continuous process of reform. Her ongoing work is a union of mechanical and manual methods of painting; the mundanity of making repetitive marks with human hands is the symbolism in her imagery. Taking possession of an empty space through relentless exertion has been her prime interest and embracing imperfection is a natural part of her current art practice.

Sculptor Vic Wright creates precariously assembled forms from sustainable casting cement, softening the hard materials with pastel pigments and curved forms, and harnessing the material’s weight to create an imbalance in space. Wright’s exploratory approach leads to a contradiction between the language of the materials and the natural forms. For example, by growing crystals onto the sculpture and playing with what we think we already know about materials.
All artwork will be available to buy and a PDF catalogue will be available to accompany the exhibition.

Mura Ma is an independent, artist-run gallery in Marple, Stockport exhibiting and selling original work by emerging artists from the North and further afield.
For further information visit www.murama.co.uk