Modern Mythology

About

The Contemporary London presents Modern Mythology, an exhibition of new works by Lindsey Bull, Adam Dix and Jess Littlewood, that draws on a rich lexicon of imagery to explore our understanding of the world and the constructed belief systems used to navigate it. Central to each of their works are themes and motifs of ritual, religion and mysticism, drawing on resources from folklore, witchcraft, religion, sci-fi and the occult culminating in a private and mysterious, ethereal and haunting mythology that transcends and overlaps between their collective worlds. 

Adam Dix explores modern manifestations of illusion, apparition or figments of the imagination. Drawing inspiration from events such as séances and the birth of the telegraph, where the knockings of spiritual awareness replicate the electrical intermittent pulses of the telegraph operator’s action, Dix brings together technology and spiritual superstition. Through the thin layering of paint glazes, Dix’s painting process metaphors the shallow illusion of the digital screen and is an analogy to the surface character of printed material. As such Dix’s works speak about communication and society but also the constructed image and our relation to it.

Through delicate manipulation and fragmentation of found Internet imagery, Littlewood creates mesmerising otherworldly digital collage landscapes. Referencing 1970s cult movements, UFO religions and death row, Littlewood explores ideas of a mythology of place. Her worlds are amphi theatres where values of human determination, power and hope are played out and where their triumphs, failures and exploitations are in constant flux in a struggle for knowledge and understanding.

Lindsey Bull's paintings explore fleeting and fragmentary instances where reality, illusion and the fantastical merge and shift the everyday into realms of spiritual, ritualistic or psychedelic perceptions. Referencing fashion and occult magazines, and film stills, her paintings depict complicated, dark, idiosyncratic or misunderstood psychologies enveloped by abstract spaces, resulting in images that rest between the seen and the hidden. Twin figures celebrate the deep connectivity between individuals and the forces that inform their symbiotic relationship, whist isolated others stand in forest clearings in performative meditation evoking a private mythology with history and the natural environment.

Dix, Littlewood and Bull, each with their own distinctive voice, articulate and explore private mythologies. Submerged in mysticism, ritual  and a sense of the transcendental, this exhibition addresses ideas of human behaviour seen in the practice of religion, collective practice, collective identity, community, communication and notions of how alternative realities realign our connection with the past and look to the future.