Rough Hewn is a two person show by Suffolk based artist Ann-Marie James and Norwich based artist Simon Newby.

Ann-Marie works in a range of media including painting, drawing, printmaking, and collage, and uses found imagery and texts to explore themes of metamorphosis and a dialogue with art history. In Rough Hewn Ann-Marie will present a series of works in various media that rework elements of a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi titled Judith and her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes (about 1623-5) that depict draped cloth, and explore further the theme of cutting within her own practise.

Simon will present a series of new sculptures and wall based works, exhibited for the first time at Asylum Studios.  In these works Simon manipulates modular objects and materials to play with pattern and movement within two and three-dimensional spaces. Diverse materials are altered or concealed, triggering new ambiguous surfaces and forms.  Underpinned by a haphazard linearity, his sculptures have been imagined as drawings in space. In these fleeting sketches, once functional objects and materials slip between the rational and ridiculous, in various states of completion. They begin to offer up a visually enticing logic of their own, which is awkward, unsettling and usually quite funny.