Jonathan Wateridge - On a Clear Day You Can See Forever

About

avid Risley Gallery is pleased to present the first solo show of new paintings by Jonathan Wateridge. The four paintings being shown depict plane crashes and ship wrecks in extreme landscapes - deep jungle, snowy mountains, ocean bed and rocky shoreline. The paintings are painted in oil on large sheets of clear Perspex, built up over 10 layers creating a physical depth within the work. Their sheer scale imbues them with a cinematic scope. They are epic scenes in the vein of Courbet or Franz Capra's Lost Horizon. Wateridge's use of models and small sets as a part of the working process on which the paintings are based continues the idea of the wrecks existing in a made, fictional world. The wreckages are out of date, obsolete machines which have ceased to be functional and now operate as metaphor. Time becomes confused in the paintings, with no clues as to when they are set.