In Heaven Versus Hell vast dichotomies are explored.
In a suite of new photographs which add considerably to his oeuvre, prominent artist Roger Mortimer upends all norms by using surreal visual devices of peril, contrast and contradiction as narrative elements. Using the metaphor of black and white he builds unforgettable paeans of unease, where nothing is as it should be or first seems. Where hell seems to have arrived or is in a process of emerging…
Daniel McAuley, in works which recall the deconstructed pictorial language of Francis Bacon and Adrian Ghenie, combines aspects of drawing and painting together. Using erasure and reapplication, he assembles abstract experiments alongside classical figuration while exploring the surrealist principle of association. Placed in rooms of despair, we witness energised figures in an active process of dissolving and reassembling.
Clark Roworth uses scale contrast as a fundamental element in works that combine portraiture with the city architecture.
Antony Densham builds landscape idylls which are in a constant state of flux and transformation. Pooled elements emerge sitting almost in isolation – part landscape, part skyscape, part reflective water – as one is comprehended so another arises. What at first seems separated becomes unified parts of a greater whole.
George Savill’s works literally spill out of the picture to encompass the frame itself. Forging a world which openly acknowledges and converses with the traditions of still life and the pictorial, celebratory landscape, Savill’s expressive works are joyous, seem liberated and free, as if heaven has come to and can be found on earth itself.