The Approach is pleased to present Out of Earth, a group exhibition featuring Bill Lynch, James Owens, Ellen Siebers and Amy Winstanley, whose work is connected by their exploration and experiences of nature. The exhibition title speaks to being ‘out of this earth’ – otherworldly and emerging from a life forged beyond terrestrial existence – as well as to being ‘of the earth’ – deeply rooted and connected with the physical environment. Plant life, trees, flora and fauna emerge from canvas surfaces in a sliding scale of abstraction as quiet reflections on the interdependencies between human and non-human worlds.

Painting onto pieces of salvaged scrap wood (sometimes on both sides), Bill Lynch depicted birds, animals, blossoming branches, waterfalls, Chinese vases, statuettes and landscapes. The artist’s loaded, seemingly spontaneous brushstrokes betray his investment in Chinese and Japanese painting whilst evoking his American roots. His confident gestures combine a dry lambent brush and thick pasty paint. The moiré woodgrain on the rough boards are often absorbed into his compositions, becoming a still body of water or suggesting a moving sky. Knots and grain in the wood seem to inspire the superimposition of moons, mushrooms, flowers or vessels.

In his work, James Owens gathers past, present and imagined scenes to form new narratives, which operate in moments of liminality. Plants creep, dance and communicate in hushed tones, growing in unlikely settings, pushing up through cracks and stretching towards the sun. This world captures nature in its full capacity – toying in flux between splendid growth and brutal death. As a small flower tenderly blossoms, another wilts. A curling tendril soon becomes a parasite. The paintings balance tentatively between strength and weakness, hope and doom. Figures may come together with closeness, but there is a sense that they are protecting each other from something. Similarly, wildflowers appear in glorious full bloom – or perhaps they are fighting against one another for survival.

Using poetic washes of abstraction, Ellen Siebers memorialises the immediacy of beauty in vignettes of daily life. She envisions indistinct but familiar verses, through a duality of sensation and perception. In gentle scenes, the simultaneity of what is felt and observed is conveyed together yet distinctly apart. Siebers gives breath to the temporal phenomena of her subjects with fluid compositions on panel. Any distinction between sight and impression is blurred by the artist’s languid brushstrokes. Intimately scaled yet uninhibited, the works capture a quality of lightness held within a fleeting moment.

Amy Winstanley’s work merges observations and research with intuitive mark-making drawn from personal experience, emotion, and memory. She researches eco-philosophy, feminist theory, indigenous thought and uses the sensorium to experience the world differently — with a focus on our entanglement in, and estrangement from, the more-than-human world. In her process, she oscillates between spontaneous gestures and conscious painterly expressions. She creates space through layers of oil paint and builds shapes and colours that immerse the viewer into a place where there is suggestion of things and an undoing of depiction in a fluid way. Winstanley is interested in the everyday occurrences of birth, death, joy and sadness and uses paintings to think through personal experiences of love, loss. She is fascinated by the act of painting itself — the movement of the hand and paintbrush on canvas — the energy of creating something from nothing.

Bill Lynch was born in 1960 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA and died in 2013 in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. The Approach works closely with the Bill Lynch family estate which resides in Raleigh. Solo exhibitions to date include: Brighton CCA, Brighton (2022); Norma Mangione, Turin (2021); The Approach, London (2022, 2017 and 2015); The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, 2016; Tanya Leighton, Berlin, 2015 and White Columns, New York, 2014. A comprehensive monograph on the life and work of Bill Lynch was published by Ridinghouse in 2017.

James Owens (b. 1995, Middlesbrough, UK) lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include Disembodied, Nicodim Gallery, L.A (2024); Once, Then, Gone, Newchild Gallery, Antwerp; felt cute, might delete later (curated by James Owens), Arusha Gallery, London; Hawthorn and the Feast of Julian, Arusha Gallery, New York, NY; A New Sensation, Galerie Marguo, Paris; The Moth and the Thunderclap, Stuart Shave Modern Art, London (all 2023); I Take What is Mine, Arusha Gallery, New York, NY; Dreaming of UFOs, Lychee One Gallery, London; Praxis, Arusha Gallery, London (all 2022).

Ellen Siebers (b. 1986, Madison, WI, USA) lives and works in Hudson, NY. Her recent solo exhibitions include: dream song, parrasch heijnen, Los Angeles, CA (2023); a divinity that shapes our ends, MARCH, New York, NY (2022); sunrise to sunset, University of Kentucky Medical Center, Lexington, KY; in the family of things, SEPTEMBER, Hudson, NY (both 2021); Sunbathers, Big Medium Gallery, Austin, TX (2017); Basic Instinct with Peter Shear, FJORD, Philadelphia, PA; Reading a Wave, with Ian White Williams, Proto Gallery, Hoboken, NJ (2016). Group exhibitions include parrasch heijnen, Los Angeles, CA; September Gallery, Hudson, NY; Harper’s Gallery, East Hampton, NY; Pt. II Gallery, Oakland, CA (all 2023); Taymour Grahne Projects, London, UK (2022); Tif Sigfrids, New York, NY; Quappi Projects, Louisville, KY (both 2021); and PEEP Projects, Philadelphia, PA (2020).

Amy Winstanley (b. 1983, Dumfries, UK) lives and works in Glasgow. Recent solo exhibitions include: Slim Glimpses, Cample Line, Thornhill, UK (2023); Lost Hap, Margot Samel, New York, NY (2023); Moral Limb, Stallan-Brand, Glasgow, UK (2021); Grief Bruise, Lunchtime Gallery, Glasgow, UK (2021); Inscapes, AndCollective Gallery, Bridge of Allen, UK (2016); and Interconnections, Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries, UK (2015). Recent group exhibitions include: Strangers, Rongwrong, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2022); tangible/intangible, The Haberdashery, Glasgow, UK (2022); Potluck, Gallery 17717, Seoul, South Korea (2021); To All Our Absent Dialogues, Warbling Collective, London, UK (2020); Surge, Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh, UK (2017); Fugue Lounge,Neverneverland, De Punt, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2018); Surge, Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh, UK (2017); Every word left unspoken during the exhibition is the title, Neverneverland, De Punt, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2017); Spring Fling at Home, Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries, UK (2014); and Members Show, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, UK (2015).