pomp

3^rd – 18^th February 2011

Private View 2^nd February 6 – 9 pm

The title of this exhibition featuring the latest work of six young London-based artists suggests something grandiose, however, given the current climate in the world of contemporary painting and sculpture, we wouldn’t expect anything grandiose, overblown or self-important – in fact quite the opposite – and, as it turns out, (note the title is in lower case) we won’t be disappointed.  In this age of acronymic jargon we might even imagine that the title stands as an acronym for something political, the ‘Power of Material Persuasion’ (as a critique of rampant consumerism), for instance, or perhaps, the ‘Proxemics of Media Personality’ (the influence of media celebrity on our lives), or even the ‘Politics of Mass Publicity’ (a commentary on the power of access to the media).

Paint and sculpture work together to both create a balance and offer a counterpoint in the dynamic of this show.  Murray O’Grady, Sarah Shoughi and Mark Walker offer very contrasting sculptural work, while Phoebe Mitchell and Alexander Clarke are showing abstract paintings, offering the contrasting geometries of the ovoid and the square, that present wide horizons for interpretive possibilities. Tom Burton’s monochrome paintings-as-objects are both the story of those objects and their narrators at the same time. If we need to establish contextual relationships between the works of these artists, as the palimpsest for a theme for this show, then it is their attention to detail, and the fact that in their works ‘object’ tends to overrule ‘subject’, but most of all, the understated ‘pomp’ of their work, which brings both an irony to the title of the show and creates the synergy between their works.     

Artists: Thomas Burton / Alexander Clarke / Phoebe Mitchell / Murray O’Grady / Sarah Shoughi / Mark Walker