Dameon Priestly, born: Belfast, Northern Ireland 1966; Graduated University of Ulster 1988 - BA Hons 2:1 Fashion and Textiles - Design and Illustration (Irish Design graduate of the year).Currently living and working in London. The preoccupation behind Dameon�s paintings is the story behind the picture - what is not seen. His work engages in a series of narratives which subtlety weave their way through the paintings: a visual depiction of what can lie beneath the surface; at times in a seemingly innocent image. Focusing on subversive elements that exist in society across the world; concentrating upon areas in America, with its vast states where people go missing and where sects are free to set up their own communities.

Solo Exhibitions
Current exhibition 2007
Lady Luck
31 August-30 September
Jeffery West
Piccadilly Arcade (off Jermyn Street), London SW1Y 6NH
Opening times: Monday - Saturday 10am-5pm

13 June until 1 July
Lady Luck,My Life in Art Gallery, London E8

Previous solo exhibitions
2006:
Malice in Wonderland. Jeffery West, Piccadilly Arcade (off Jermyn Street), London SW1Y

Missing: series 2 Jeffery West, Cullum Street, London EC3M

2005:
Jeffery West, Piccadilly Arcade (off Jermyn Street), London SW1Y 6NH Jeffery West, County Arcade, Victoria Quarter, Leeds LS1 6BW

The Art Bar, Walton Street, South Kensington, London SW3

Jeffery West, Piccadilly Arcade (off Jermyn Street), London SW1Y 6NH

2004:
The Art Bar, Walton Street, South Kensington, London SW3 Jeffery West, Piccadilly Arcade (off Jermyn Street), London SW1Y 6NH

Jeffery West, Cullum Street, London EC3M

The Mint Bar, Chalk Farm

2003:
Jeffery West, Cullum Street, London EC3M The Mint Bar, Chalk Farm, London

Jeffery West, Piccadilly Arcade, London

The Art Bar, Walton Street, South Kensington, London

2002:
Devonshire Mews Members Lounge, London Jeffery West, Piccadilly Arcade, London

East London Gallery, London

2001:
Devonshire Mews Members Lounge, London Jeffery West, Piccadilly Arcade, London

Otto’s Lounge Bar, London

2000:
Elm’s Lester Paintings Rooms, London Jeffery West, Piccadilly Arcade, London

23 Romily Street, Private Members Lounge, London

1999:
East London Gallery, London Vic Naylors Restaurant, London

Jeffery West, Piccadilly Arcade, London

Group Exhibitions
1-9 December 2007
Invited to exhibit at the Florence Biennale Dell’Arte Contemporanea

Articles
Nude magazine - article on Missing:series 1
The London Informer - article on Malice in Wonderland exhibition
The Hackney Gazette - article on Lady Luck exhibition

Dameon has produced several series of works; Lady Luck, Malice in Wonderland, Missing: series 2, Missing: series 1.

About the series:

Missing: series 1
Murder is terrifyingly easy in America. You can kill a stranger, dump the body in a place where it will never be found and be 2,000 miles away before the murdered person is even missed. At any given time there are an estimated twelve to fifteen serial murderers at large in the country, just drifting around, snatching random victims and then moving on, leaving behind few clues and no motives. Every year in America approximately 5,000 murders go unsolved. That is an incredible number.

Missing as a collective is about a journey, both actual and metaphorical. The actual is that of our protagonist (unseen) and his quest to charm and lure his prey to their ultimate and untimely demise.

Theirs is also an actual journey, from the centre of their world (and yet the centre of nothing and nowhere), to a land of dreams and promises, that becomes a journey into the mind of darkness and their iconographic resting places; a truck, a trailer, a railway carriage and a disused gas station.

The metaphorical journey is that into the imaginary psyche of an intelligent and charming serial killer, disillusioned with the moral and social decay that is back state USA and also driven by his attraction and the simultaneous revulsion of his victims. You are not in Walt Whitmans Kansas anymore

It is a metaphorical journey for the young girls also from their closed off world of visions, beliefs and experiences into the reality of life: that which is on the surface is only a veneer of skin and light and noise the rest is whatever you hope it is; but know its probably not.

Missing: series 2
Dameons work concentrates upon looking into the American Dream and its unquestioning belief and hope; soullessly based upon the unfulfilled promise of adverts and illusions. When you grow up in America you are imbued from the earliest age with the understanding that America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth because God likes them the best; that counties just dont come any better. They are told that with a little good old fashioned hard work and a bit of luck things can be just as presented on TV.

However, this illusion is not as convincing to a growing percentage of people who know their escape from bitter reality seems impossible. Still, there are those who try for a better way of life, believing that they can escape the mind-numbing dreary uniformity of mid America; blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes, poverty and television, that ultimately they will escape to a place where there must be more to life than the vast ground locked states which offer nothing of the Promised Land that their President and cooperate advertising guarantees to deliver. Unfortunately for some, this journey of discovery and fulfilment does not always have a happy, or even an acceptable end.

Missing: series 2 follows on with this notion of wanderlust and escape, of a road trip to paradise, of how those seeking a better life who are easily lead by the promises and stories of another; despite their desire not to be taken in and absorbed by them. Existing too in this world is the psychotic; also taken in by the myth that the importance of possessions and the acquisition of things are necessary. However, in this case it is the ultimate possession - that of another human being which becomes the desirable object. ‘Since this girl represents not a person, but an image, or something desirable, the last thing we would expect him to want, would be to personalise this person.’ S. Michaud (The Only Living Witness, 1983).

Malice in Wonderland
Malice in Wonderland - the earthly gateway to the promised land is not always what it appears to be, set in the ‘Bible-belt’ Mid West of America in the 1970s, the stories behind the pictures are disturbing in their inference and hollow in their scriptures. The series Malice in Wonderland hopes to bring to the forefront that it is not ultimately about religion, love or worship in the service of God, it is about the power they can excerpt over individuals and masses.
The text in Dameons work is from quotes found on Churches and road signs across America. The churches seen depicted are also taken from across America showing the cross influence of colonial foundations of state religions.

Lady Luck
In the America of the 1930s & 40s new highways were being built, scything their way through boundaries, borders and state lines. They heralded a new era, a time of change. America was on the move, its people were going places albeit within their own country.

Scattered alongside these, appeared all manner of motels, eateries, convenience stores and truck stops, to service its various travellers.

There were families going out of state on their vacation; sales-men crossing county lines chasing that big deal which would secure them for life and there were truck-drivers keeping every thing supplied to every corner of the nation. There, of course, has always been too the loner, the drifter, the hitchhiker and the runaway, but something has changed.

Once seen as beacons of light in the darkness, as the oasis in the wilderness these places are now more like light houses, warning the travellers of the possible perils in the vicinity. But have these places changed, or is it rather that society has?

Although these places were originally meant as stop offs on your way somewhere, they became something else - they became the destination.

They attracted those people who regarded these places as the end of the line. When a lone man queuing in a fast-food chain in some small town cracks and opens fire on the innocents around him, before killing himself, it is seen as a cul lrather than a killing. And when someone goes missing, and is last reported being seen at a gas station or truck-stop diner, no one is the least surprised.

Website: dameon
Contact email: dameon@dameon.co.uk

Zoe studied Fine Art at Kent Institute of Art and Design in Canterbury and has since had exhibitions in London, Reading, Newcastle, and the South West.

Her work captures fragments of experiences from both past and present. A narrative runs though the paintings, which brings memories, dreams and moments in time together. She explores the beauty and excitement of life and its inherent fragility.

She is concerned with what lies beneath the surface and the indications that reveal what exists beyond the outward face. She explores this in a psychological sense and this is often revealed in a layered surface.

Website: Zoe Hyde
Contact email: zoehyde@hotmail.com