Houldsworth Fine Art is very pleased to present Little Angels, an exhibition that will include all sorts, from the saccharine-sweet to the devilish. Heavenly creatures, sleeping babies, and the clichéd innocence, that compares the world to oysters, ease a slip into the nostalgic bliss of childhood fancies and divine illusions.
Children and angels are protagonists in worlds that are not inhabited nor ever wholly understood by adults and, as Little Angels will show, ones that cannot be easily relocated. The works by Glenn Brown, Mat Collishaw and Christopher Bucklow are opaque and spellbinding illusions to those fantastic and celestial spheres.
However, it is the initial impressions of innocence and vulnerability that can be misleading, for children, more often than not, are masters of manipulation. They seek the attention and approval of adults, but underneath those disguises of precious and angelic faces, there is a disregard for their elder counterparts; a battle for independence and identity with the headquarters based on the playground.
Little Angels explores what is concealed beneath those fragile and tender skins. Laura Ford's sculpture emphasises the burden that children carry, grossly underestimated by adults. The delicate, yet eerie portraits by Kiki Lamers and Kristin Oppenheim attempt to pin down the fleeting and transitory nature of childhood whilst Rineke Dijkstra's photographs convey the awkwardness and discomfort of adolescence, when teenagers reluctantly realise that the halcyon days have passed.
