Exceptional Faults

“All art draws its origin from an exceptional fault, each work is the implementation of this original fault, from which comes a risky plenitude and new light.” (Maurice Blanchot)

This exhibition examines the language of disquiet within the painted image. The show presents work which occupies the transitional space between the “symptomatic” image and its “underside”, that which defies rational understanding but maintains a plausible status within its reading. This plausibility has its roots in the acceptance of the uncanny, not a complete acceptance but enough to recognise that a lack of legibility is a legitimate part of the whole. The artists within the exhibition all readily embrace narratives that, in diverse ways, examine alternative and counter-intuitive readings of image, form and context within interior and exterior worlds.

Howard Dyke presents large scale works that mix paint with collage, foraging imagery from multiple sources. His paintings present image structures vividly realised through the interaction of luscious paint and emphatic yet elusive form, unfamiliar but energetically coherent. In his new paintings Dexter Dymoke mines the potential of unexpected and off-kilter narratives charged within apparently prosaic settings. Staged scenarios are metaphors for uncertain outcomes, supported by formal yet unsettling imagery. Grant Foster is driven by an irreverent exploration of the world. His imagery deploys an intentional defiance of rational systems, dismantling preconceived mechanisms of control and the “sancrosanctity of reason”. His work emerges as a nuanced dialogue between the past, the present and an imagined future, circumnavigating the logical and the familiar. In Steph Goodger`s paintings archival research is fused with historical landscape and interiors resulting in eerie reconfigurations. Referencing the trauma of war she explores states of suspension and frozen memory arising from the destruction of the familiar in life and nature. Geraldine Swayne is a painter, filmmaker and experimental musician. Her paintings have a filmic atmosphere and a dreamlike quality that fosters unease. Her unusual approach, and media, emphasize an internal psychological narrative, with painterly effects that speak to the unconscious rather than the intellect and heighten evidence of a vivid interior psyche.

In his paintings Christopher Tree explores perceptions and representation of mood, atmosphere and meaning within unsettling moments. Drawing on fragments of narratives, he simultaneously seeks to exploit liminal positions within them, and his process. This is supported by counter-intuitive decision-making, avoiding obvious visual hierarchies and emphasis. Robert Welch`s paintings seem at first off-hand but time spent with them reveal a discerning eye that subtly catches the details of everyday life. A process of careful thought and preparation edits the imagery to a frank and focused rendition of the subject. What follows is a poetic and finely poised essay on how the world outside mirrors the psyche, the interior world.