Occult Bristol is a group show featuring the work of Rich Beale, Siena Barnes and Ryan Broom, three fiercely individual international artists with links to rock ‘n’ roll who crawled out from beneath very similar rocks. The work displayed includes Siena’s large format Indian ink monochrome paintings in which she riffs on meme culture and meaning gaps in the information age and Ryan’s meditations on memory-haze produced in his attempts to make contemporary technology ape tools such as the traditional printing press. As well as his visual pieces, Rich will display a range of totemic objects (papers, tape recordings and ephemera from the sprawling occult diary of Don Mandarin esquire via a series of vitrines punctuating the space. Although the artists involved march to the beat of their own drum they are united via their approach as practitioners, their aesthetic and their admiration for one another’s work. That work, with its monochrome take on images and objects stands defiant against the current vogue for the colourful and the corny and asks tough, interesting questions at a time when people seem to solely want to be fed boring, easy answers.

Tutored by, amongst others, John Yeadon at Coventry’s art school in the early 1980s, having gained entry with a plastic bag full of the art work produced for the seminal THE POP GROUP in 1979/80, Rich Beale threw away a promising career in the arts by indulging in aimless study and wanderings for 5 years. Rich became a ward of the state until 1987 when he and HEAD signed to Virgin records. When the band washed up in the States 3 years later Beale returned to undisciplined artistic activity and study for another decade before finding a suitable outlet / constellation of mediums; underground label releases (labels like Swarf Finger, Ochre, and now Bumtapes and Throne of Bael), independent publications, small exhibitions and now draws on this and more in collage, prose and painted panels.

Siena Barnes grew up in art galleries. Her trademark large-scale Indian ink panels scroll through the shadow side of the information age. Horror, porn and headlines converge in a click-bait hell where opposing ideas share the same timeline. Siena has exhibited across Europe and is collected internationally.

The core of Ryan Broom’s work is inspired by what he sees as our distorted and corrupt relationship with the natural world. Ryan’s work, inspired as much by his interest in paganism as the DIY punk approach, subverts default settings and sets painting, print, photography, graphic design and music on a spin cycle in order to express himself not just as an outsider artist, but as a human being.