A Red Sky At Night

About

‘A Red Sky at Night’ is the new collaborative effort/ audacious exhibition by the artist-brothers Zachary Talbot-Mason and Daniel Talbot-Mason. One can characterise their familial practices as having a devil-may-care confidence in the usage of colour. A joyous, even childlike marveling, appreciation and championing of natural imagery. Some examples of the subject matter include fallen leaves, rolling hills and eerie sunsets far-away in the background: randomly vindicating the group portraits of fictitious peoples, cheery wildlife moving in the scenery, and lonely compunctious self-portraits.

In this exhibition from 6th - 17th November 2024, the artist- brothers present to their viewers an unclear vision of the world, each suffering their tendency for unconscious thought and macro narrative to implode, inviting a new figuration to emerge. Ultimately, we are left with a rude dual portrait for an art show, which leaves us like how a sun must: with that certain self-certain air for the inevitability and finality of everything.

Drawing means a lot for both of these artists who share a common trait for generating automatic sketches when by their selves at home, eventually inaugurating larger scale paintings and sculpture work, featuring here in the show today.

In a well spirited desire to search depths, both artists effectively reflect an elapse of time alive, of broken sensations, some thoughts, some reflections, and common stories. The conversation goes further in a psychological sense - in the idea of the self-divided into ‘the multiple‘.

Neither artist intuits any sense of local colour, because of this, the self can know of no sensations, shapes or generalised formation, is not accustom to the light, and henceforward colour has no coordination.

Especially the elder ZTM who paints with the abstracted feeling of a physiological breakdown taking place. The word ‘ramble’ comes to mind. A two-forked concept meant to describe long walks through the countryside and is similarly used to describe a monologue of great length. Other synonyms include: drifting, wandering and roving.

Point A meets B to reveal C, linear movement and decisive thoughts can be traced throughout his paintings.

Roguish figures meddle themselves with opposite colours made using only one paintbrush. Paint loads and congeals until numerous portraits go teaming, disappearing before reappearing in the blink of an eye. ZTM’s subjects are full of character, existing charmingly and playfully. They multiply, stretching over a strange backdrop before finally sunning on a distant horizon - the artist’s symbol of hope despite the realities of one’s body. As his figures go through the land they walk without knowledge of a final destiny. Confounding a long-suffering and ceaseless painter-creator.
Who strives to achieve certain harmony with the out-door scenery.

Meanwhile, DTM’s sculptures further amplify the preceding thematic: as self-portrait as a system of multiplication, and for the Self, a process of embodiment.

Behind the sweetly bedeviled “bal masqué” of DTM’s masks reveals something softer and more tender, like the gradual air-drying clay used in his series of small-scale sculptures. Once soft and pliable, his figures harden to take shape into a new exterior, concealing the inner workings and delicate process of creation. As his exterior is abstracted into various facial forms, they exist as humorously surreal maquettes, revealing an uncanny yet truthful understanding of self-image.

DTM’s sensitivities towards a changeable self is further translated from sculpture to painting. Talon-like mark-makings in DTM’s drawings entwine and embolden existing silhouettes, giving emergence to primordial forms. As they bleed out intuitively, his drawings bear semblance to the invasive growth of fungi - self-assured and yet vulnerable, simultaneously all-affronting and idle, readily terrestrial and quickly then alien.
In order to excavate new depths of one’s psyche, DTM develops his artworks using a topographical approach, uncovering layers with careful introspection.

Meanwhile, ZTM’s thoughts head off in a tangent, encouraging intuition to manifest boldly on the paper.

Eventually, the artworks of ZTM and DTM collide in their new debut show ‘Red Sky at Night’. The earthbound, mystery, oddly made show, invites their modern silhouettes: ‘the painterly’ and ‘the sculptural’ to finally eclipse, next to one another for a brief moment in time.

Born out of half-lit living chambers and the wan light source, the artist-brothers’ figures are strengthened by varying mediums and brightly-coloured paper. They are the result of an instinctual approach to mark- making and an embodied awareness of capturing self-portraiture. Resembling a red and impressive sky.

This transience allows one to reimagine themselves, it wills the artist-brothers to sketch out a hopeful dawning, some peaceful still, or something of tomorrow, despite all genuine reality of our today.

ZTM, DTM October 2024