The Salon des Fables Director :

• Steph Goodger

Artists of the Salon des Fables

• Steph Goodger
• Julie McDermott
• Julian Rowe

Different kinds of light create illuminated areas specific to each work.  Julian Rowe’s Standing by Water uses powerful lighting to create the illusion of profound depth, turning the water pool into a mirror that reflects the surrounding environment within it.  Softer lighting projects pieces of a poem, written for the sculpture, onto the wall behind.  The projected words are subsequently reflected in the water.

Julie McDermott takes residence in the Miniature Museum, created to fit with the scale of her works.  From left to right her paintings are titled, Hovering Bird, Projected Land,  Pigs Dragging bird, Retreat from the Glowing Tree, Broken Horse, Cat Over Brussels, Rabbit Defense, Duck Contemplating Housing Developments,  Red Terriers, Squirrel Monument, Architecture of Dogs,  Zebra and Pigs, and Robin General.

Steph Goodger’s large oil paintings, from the series Watery Dramas, fit with the scale of the gallery itself, creating a Russian doll effect with the Miniature Museum, one room fitting inside another.   Both Goodger and McDermott have populated their painted worlds with fabulous creatures, which adds to this effect of a smaller version inside a bigger version.  Goodger’s Watery Dramas, consisting of Monument to the Miracle of the Horse, Flight and Charge, and Fish Hell, fit around Rowe’s Standing by Water, the paintings just in their raw state, hung directly onto the stone. 

Rowe alone works in three dimension, the much needed contrast and dynamic element.  The illusion of profundity in his water platform creates the sense of a space below the gallery floor, whilst the Miniature Museum creates a second space within it.