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Now It Feels As It Should Be, curated by Jonathan Kipps and Amy Mckenny, opens at CoExist Galleries on Thu 1 July.

It is the absurdity of life and our experience of its futility that brings these works together. There is a sense of ‘being’ in the world and hence, it is as much about the torture in day-to-day life as it is also about the pleasures. Relationships between humans (and the world around them) are explored via the artists’ personal narratives. We are urged to consider the familiarity with our situations and surroundings.

In Alannah Barker’s drawings people sit somewhere between floating and falling. The viewer has been deprived of all exterior context from the compositions, leaving a sense of ambiguity and slight unease as to the well-being of the subject.

Vibe Cube, the brain-child of Stuart Bowditch and Damien Robinson, allows the viewer to experience ‘feel sound’. The hearing element becomes secondary as our awareness is raised to another way we experience sound – as pure vibrations.

Light bulbs stroke and rub rusty bits of metal in Mark Davey’s sculptures. Sometimes lovingly, sometimes forcefully, industrial materials are used in strangely corporeal ways. There is awkward feeling of voyeurism as the viewer realises what is taking place in front of them.

Nottingham based Edward Morris’ paintings uncomfortably provide an obsessive insight into imagined illnesses. Organic shapes floating in fields of monochrome colour, combined with titles such as ‘hypochondria,’ make a weird beautiful aesthetic.

Time spent in northern latitudes where there is an absence of darkness during the summer and lack of light during the winter, has obviously had a profound effect on Eva Rudlinger’s practice. A sense of awe is captured, as if lying on the ground looking up at the stars, when in fact the viewer is actually witnessing the densest areas of light pollution as seen from a satellite.

Alannah Barker is based in Portsmouth and recently graduated Farnham UCA; Stuart Bowditch and Damien Robinson have toured the Vibe cube around 5 locations in Essex since 2009 and continue to collect sounds for this on going project; Mark Davey from London, won Channel 4 and Saatchi gallery’s ‘New Sensations’ in 2008; Eva Rudlinger (also from London) recently exhibited at A.I.E.F.F. Australian International Experimental Film Festival in Melbourn, Nottingham based artist Edward Morris recently took part in Psyche Target at Turn-Berlin, Berlin.

Open Thu&Fri 10-2pm and Sat&Sun 10-4pm.

More information on COEXIST WEBSITE.