It's Still Life; paintings by Helen Rawlins

About

Helen Rawlins paints from a limited range of everyday crockery. Playing with ideas of repetition and rearranging, she uses the same objects over and over, combining them into paintings and drawings that reveal the material poetics of the mundane and the everyday. They become metaphors for our relationships or interaction through shifting perspectives, the commonplace as containers for meaning - gathered together as piled masses or staggered as onlookers.  Examining differences in the way paint behaves on surfaces - canvas, board or paper - Rawlins is trying to control, to a certain extent, the uncontrollable fluidity of the paint on the surface.  The anxiety of the process being in tune with the sense of apprehension or unease that can be portrayed though the composition of objects.

This is the first solo show for Rawlins, having previously exhibited in national group exhibitions such as the Jerwood Drawing Prize, The National Open Art Competition, The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition and the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition.