Andrew North. Surfacing.

About

North paints on a variety of surfaces encompassing themes of memory, time and place. Rural and urban landscapes, architecture, nature and sometimes figures are motifs that reoccur. His work shifts between moments of representation and abstraction in a painting practice that involves the entirety of picture making from stretcher construction to framing. Often overpainted, cropped, punctured or texturised, the pictures probe the foundations of easel painting. Fading and transitory, the works arise from a recorded experience of the world we inhabit, conjuring up new formations on the canvas through a combination of the observed and the act of painting.

For his show Surfacing at South Parade, North presents a selection of recent work. There is a play between the time tendered to the picture surface of a work and the often transient imagery depicted. Older works in the exhibition hold ground with newly finished pieces, attesting to the potential for surprising dialogues between paintings. The encaustic work Untitled (2013 - 2023) acts as a cornerstone to the exhibition. Started in 2013, the painting represents a ten year gestation time in the studio. The translucency of the applied materials reveals different states of painting, with the tended surface suggesting the work as both painting and as object. Like many of the paintings here, there is a plurality to the work; a history in the making and a momentary image, a representation and an abstraction, a depth and a surface.