OPENING EVENT: Wednesday, 26 February, 5.30-7.30pm

Without giving away too much, one may as well give away everything. Recent months have forced one to confront the passing away of people close to me, nothing too strange but sometimes the loss actually bites, and a kind of beautiful sadness pervades the atmosphere. Meaning and bearings wriggle and shift, and meanwhile one is faced with a reality that involves continue and make...make work. Inevitably one ends up holding oneself to account, and the art one builds kind of emerges from feelings of loss. It’s not a bad situation, it’s just a little complex, and also of course revealing.

In the midst of building the larger colourful paintings, I had for some reason kept behind a looser black and white, or monochrome painting. It ended up at the top of the studio opposite my desk and I began to notice it softly breathing through its tangled lines, pushing out beyond the fringes. It seemed to hold a close proximity to how one was feeling. The piece which pretty much titled itself, "this eye...", and which I - in my typical fashion -  latched a Beckett monologue to, became the point of reference for now.|

It was the now I was being forced to encounter and the mess that it felt like. This is the show. bad things happen and we have our humanity to face them with.

MP February 2025

Installation photography by Sam Hartnett.