17 May – 8 June 2024, Ladder Art Space, Kew
This series of paintings is an exploration of interactions with the yellow field. Combining abstract and figurative elements, alongside geometric lines and geological formations, the works create a dialogue between expanses of yellow and blue with residual matter. Through the interplay of these elements, the works explore ideas of information-seeking as spiritual act.
The works seek to physicalise the mental state of confronting an unsolved and compelling problem. They achieve this through the compositional device of figures immersed in angular and surreal spatial compositions, characterized by steep diagonal lines and fields. These spaces seem unfamiliar, there is no vegetation or animal life. The angles create a sense of slip, a feeling that the earth could shift at any moment. These appear to be transient settings, yet they also seem historical and fossilized. Some of the figures look at the viewer, as if momentarily diverted from their mental pursuits.
The works blur the boundaries between interior and exterior spaces. They employ the structural angles of interior spaces to construct exterior landscapes, merging and projecting them onto one another. Bright geometric yellow fields, seemingly out of place in nature, appear wedged into or pasted onto the apparent landscape. The combination of angles, lines, colour and figuration together work to create an insular psychological space.
Central to the works is the idea that the acquisition of knowledge is both intoxicating and spiritual.
The nature of the yellow fields is not explicit, they are unknown and unknowable, yet their vivid colour and strategic placement make them focal points. These fields overshadow and absorb the figure which congregate around them in an almost religious or deferential manner. The works emphasize the hypnotic allure of the process of trying to realise apparent truths, patterns, and knowledge and the idea of the surprising interconnections and coincidences.
