28th September - 1st October 2023
with Beaux Arts Bath

My first show with Beaux Arts Bath, showing new paintings alongside sculpture by Beth Carter and ceramics by Paul Wearing.

Please contact the gallery for more information about available work or for an invitation to the Private View

London Art Fair
Islington Design Centre
Beaux Arts Bath - stand G20
18th - 22nd January

In this new body of work for her first solo show at Arusha Bruton, Russon looks beyond the dark interiors of her childhood, casting around for alternative objects or belief systems – the stories we tell ourselves which define our personal sense of reality and provide us with hope in our increasingly secular, multicultural and fragmented society. They can take many and various forms: amulets and talisman (pieces of jewellery, a lucky charm, a favourite teddy, a faded, sepia photograph in a wallet – in fact any object imbued with the imaginary power to encourage, protect, reassure or inspire the wearer or carrier) as well as superstitions, ancient rites and shared community-based folk traditions which have persisted for centuries. Where, to whom or to what do we turn when we are afraid? To relatives or friends if we are fortunate enough to have them? To our many and various ‘gods’ or ‘deities’ if we believe in them? To folklore and superstition or to objects in which, rightly or wrongly, we place our faith and trust? These are the questions posed in this body of work. Highly personal and based on the artist’s own life, memories and observations, these powerful paintings are timeless metaphors for the enduring issues of loneliness, isolation, separation, immigration, exploitation, poverty and ill-health in society.

In this exhibition Russon places herself alongside other female artists such as Frida Kahlo, Paula Rego and Jean Cook who have created their own unique, dramatic and sometimes harrowing narratives relating to the roles women play in family life - homemaker, mother, lover, wife, daughter, friend, nurse, care-giver, keeper of secrets, victim - and to the physical and emotional burdens and abuse they frequently suffer.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickenson.



© Alison Swan – June 2022

'Observing The Popular Girls' selected for the Discerning Eye exhibition at the Mall Galleries. 12 -21 November 2021

My painting 'Quiet Vengeance has been accepted into the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2018

CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF THE ARTS
103 CHARLTON STREET
NEW YORK
USA

SCALE - POSSIBILITIES OF PERSPECTIVE

10TH MAY - 9TH SEPTEMBER 2018

21st National Open Art Exhibition
Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf
Southbank London SE1 9PH

Open Daily 11am - 6 pm | 17 - 26 November 2017

Nearest Tube: Waterloo (Jubilee, Northern and Bakerloo lines), Southwark (Jubilee Line) and Blackfriars (Circle and District).