By CATHRIN SCHAER
There's a blurring of lines at the Gully Lounge Gallery group show this week, but not in the usual smudgy charcoal-drawing sense.
The artists don't have what pundits would normally describe as "serious art" backgrounds.
Christopher Davies recently completed a diploma in graphic design and his sister, Lou Davies, is an award-winning fashion designer who works fulltime at the World label. The third exhibitor, Pebbles Hooper - daughter of World founders Denise L'Estrange-Corbet and Francis Hooper - is only 14.
Yet for all three, this exhibition - the first such show they've done together - is an important creative outlet. "There's definitely some blurring," Christopher agrees. "At the moment I'm really unsure of where I stand. I don't know whether to call my work art or design, because it's not done for a client and I don't write myself a brief.
"It tends to be more emotional. I need it to be personal. And I spent my entire time at design school trying to turn everything into an excuse for an over-elaborate illustration."
The 21-year-old has already found an outlet for some of his intricate drawings - fashion designers have commissioned pieces to adorn clothing or to use as marketing material. But Christopher spends most of his time doing his own thing in a small studio in Parnell.
Diverse things inspire his work. One drawing involves a lot of birds, "because there's a great big tree outside my studio window I see birds all day long".
Another involves the underside of giant field mushrooms. "I found these big mushrooms and I really liked the texture. It was fleshy and almost sexual, so I've applied the qualities of that to the work." For the Gully Lounge show he has turned some of his art into wallpaper, using repeated drawings to form the larger pattern. "I like patterns, because then you can't focus on any specific part of it. It's more about a mood or a feeling and I think you get more of an emotional response to the work."
His sister Lou's art is also about emotions. The 25-year-old works in multimedia and has assembled pieces reflecting on her return from an overseas sojourn, during which time she worked in the fashion industry in Milan and London.
But where Christopher is happy to muse on the hazy boundaries between design and art, Lou is not quite so sure about that blurring - her personal art and her work at the World label is very different.
For instance, she has used scissors as a tool in her work, but suspects that's as close as it gets. "I like to have a break from fashion and I like to keep it quite separate," she says. "Where I work from nine-to-five I am making things that are projected and shown on a big scale and that have quite a big impact, whereas with this show it's quite private and special."
That's one of the reasons Lou and Christopher invited Pebbles Hooper, to show with them. It's an extended family thing, and Pebbles and Christopher had been drawing together anyway.
Pebbles says her drawings "are about my own view of the world. "I think sometimes it's quite dark, but sometimes it's quite stylised and cartoony".
Exhibition
What: Mountain Fountain
Where and when: Gully Lounge Gallery, St Kevin's Arcade, until August 1
Friends line up their emotions
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