'HEARTH' new work by NIGEL MASSEY

About

Nigel Massey brings together fabricated works (Formica-clad MDF forms, clear Perspex containers and Jacquard tapestries), made in collaboration with their respective trades, with other more casual or opportunistic methods (found objects). This clinical and premeditated process is then usurped through remodeled expression. Previous experience as a bronze caster has made Massey mindful of the dangers of high production-value manufacture and of the Medusa-like affect this may have on ideas. Believing instead that the making is at its height during the gaps between operations, he designs objects to be fabricated then deconstructs and re-finds their role through his work-so shedding light into the shadows between processes. As an inter-disciplinarian Massey operates in the hinterland of sculpture, printmaking and painting, and his work acknowledges several formal concerns. The exposed sides of the wall-mounted Perspex boxes evoke painterly forms, where layered materials convey visual depth and reveal a physical structure. This counterpoints the illusory structure and depth created by the photomechanical space of the picture plane; a dynamic that enables the viewer to see both the illusion of the stage set and the reality of the wings. There are also freestanding tapestries that upholster a more precarious mass: stuffed, propped and cajoled into an alliance with unyielding structures. His pointedly sculptural language thus creates textile taxidermy: a trophy, stoic with a deadpan nobility.