cardinals, gardens, fishtails and a mermaid | Chris Marshall & George Percy

About

George Percy's history of transcribing through a love and knowledge of the history of painting is crucial to his practice. Chris Marshall's research is rooted in a genuine concern and sensitivity towards the environment, which reveals itself in the form determined by his discovery, and use of unusual materials.

Central to the works shown by George Percy is a series of paintings inspired by El Greco's portrait of Cardinal Don Fernando Nino de Guevara. The fusion of psychological depth and the representation of the sumptuous richness of the Roman Catholic Church in El Greco's work stimulated him to make works that pay homage to the painting. The works explore  the dynamics of the original composition and provide an opportunity to indulge an extravagant use of red. Another series explores the topography of both private and public gardens. Responses to Matisse can be traced in the fragmentation of the picture surface.

Achieving a similar level of intensity Chris Marshall's installation exposes 'A lyrical tribute to the meeting of land and sea'. A landscape of transition, a marginal landscape, a nervous fretful landscape, an edgeland. Anxious materials, invasive, unsound, hostile, negative materials. Their anxiety revealed by juxtaposing and mixing them with sublime, absurd, frivolous materials and substances. A garden of dancing fishtails. A mermaid washed up on the beach, fabricated from industrial clay and kelp. Fabrications from pillows encrusted with dried mud. Shredded and lacerated paper seascape with popcorn and icing powder foam.