Pile- Exhibition curated by Craig Fisher

This enquiry extends previous investigations exploring the relation between pattern, decoration and formalist abstraction, addressing painting’s capacity to establish a ‘visual pulse’, enabling a re-interpretation of both a previous painting and a body of new paintings/drawings. The work was selected for a comprehensive sculpture exhibition that questions the conventions of group exhibitions. Ways in which painting’s autonomy is examined through display and proximity to the work of others are explored. Mother in Law’s Tongue, a three-panelled painting on domestic door blanks, connected floor and wall – both siting and object/image address the boundary between painting and sculpture. The hierarchy of fine art over decorative arts is challenged: the painting used as a device on which to hang the work of another artist, risking that the work might be seen as a decorative prop. Previous research using repetition and difference as a means to invoke a visual pulse in painting was re-visited in a new body of paintings on paper, continuing investigations of relations between internal mark-making, in relation to frame, size and scale, and parameters of substrate. The project restricts colour to its constitute subtractive primaries (magenta, yellow, and cyan), which then enables the exploration of a set of permutations and combinations. The resulting paintings are constructed through a repetitive process, engaging the viewer in the rhythm and craft of production, producing a hypnotic quality, making the work seem more ‘alive’ than the methodical nature of production might suggest. The slippage between systematic abstraction and pattern suggests an in-between space, uncertain and open to interpretation. Earlier stages of this research include: a group exhibition Trick of Light, Primo Alonso Gallery, London, 2010, curated by Juan Bolivar; and two chapbooks in the series Transmission Hospitality (London: Artwords, 2010, 2011) – from the second, a visual and textual dialogue with the artist Jane Harris, the saturated works above developed.