humdrum

About

The artists in this exhibition embrace the creative potential of their own day-to-day experiences in a diverse range of outcomes. Robin Tarbet transforms polystyrene waste packaging into cast concrete totemic sculptures whilst Ruth Chambers’ repetitive and intensive drawings on the inside of envelopes reveal an infinite possibility in the confines of interior space. Painter Adam Hennessey looks to the streets for subject matter, his paintings of everyday scenarios illustrating the strangeness of what we might commonly oversee or choose to acknowledge. Mimei Thompson observes the natural world that we often prefer to avoid as slimy snails trail across the canvas and upturned flies glisten in sticky oil paint. Hamish Pearch’s realistic sculptures of sprouting fungi appear to sprout from blackened  burnt toast creating a  juxtaposition between a failed daily routine and the continuing lifecycle of decay and re-invention.

Sebastian Sochan explores form, colour and textile techniques that question our relationship to the world of aesthetics. Working with sensual and evocative materials such as sugar, Sochan will make an ambitious new sculpture which connects both floors of the gallery, elevating familiar materials and experiences into monumental sculptural form. Painter Craig Wylie turns his attention to mundane objects that occupy the locality of his own studio. The broken and disregarded become props for Still Life studies observed in meticulous detail, elevating the humble to the sublime. Bruce Ingram also looks to his immediate surroundings in collaging gathered papers and offcuts from his classroom and studio to create a series of works on paper that are displayed in a manner that acknowledges production and the creative working of the studio.  Jack Lavender’s  assembled glass sculpture references his own experience and the journey home from school, trapped between sheets of glass, a humble range of throw away objects are ritually  preserved and sealed in a window like vitrine. Rob Reed also navigates contemporary landscape in painting  places that are generally overlooked, forgotten or await development. Reed’s small paintings record the unacknowledged or ignored spaces that we navigate in our daily lives with the overgrown, dead-end,  broken and graffiti sprawled rendered in exquisite detail.

Ian Gouldstone’s new installation continues his on-going investigation into computer code and aesthetics of game imagery. Code and mathematics operate beside found objects, where endless computer simulations are left to run in ‘physical playgrounds’ the moving image running forever, constantly reforming and never repeating itself. James Irwin investigates the relationship between physical and digital reality using sculpture, sound and moving image. In a series of multi layered collaged film works, Irwin’s work seeks to offer alternative narratives which challenge and confront how we make meaning.

Humdrum invites the viewer to look at the everyday world with fresh eyes, prompting us to re-think our relationship to mass-produced objects, technology and familiar places. Gallery visitors  will be encouraged to re-evaluate  the familiar, everyday, mundane and often humdrum side of life.

For appointments to visit the exhibition or for additional information please contact:

Susan Mullholland mulhollandsm@dulwich.org.uk 

Bruce Ingram ingrambd@dulwich.org.uk