Nest of Salt

About

“Since Heraclitus, it's been a commonplace that things are in continuous flux, but alchemical thinking opens a much more radical possibility: that flux itself may be a thing.”

– James Elkins, What Painting Is

“So I’ve sat and I’ve watched an ice-age thaw / Are you the one that I’ve been waiting for?”

– Nick Cave

Transformation lies at the heart of artistic practice. Art is related to artifice, in part meaning workmanship, the creation of something using craft and skill; in part meaning skill in cunning and trickery – the ability to create an impression or illusion of something by the process of transformation. Art is linked to alchemy, the medieval form of chemistry that dealt with the transformation of base materials into gold.

In his essay on the relationship between painting and alchemy, James Elkins breaks down the distinction between the properties of materials and their chemical substances:

“The alchemists debated the nature of qualities; sometimes they thought of them as clothes that could be taken off, leaving the pure ‘body’ of the object, and other times they thought qualities were the body itself... the moral I draw from these debates... is that where alchemy and painting are concerned, there is no reason to distinguish substances, qualities, principles, and even elements. What matters in any specific instance is what is occupying the mind: a certain oil varnish may be engaging because it is unusually viscous, in which case a quality counts as a substance... substances occupy the mind as concepts and concepts occupy the mind as substances.”

ibid. pp 108-109 (emphasis added)

In other words, the effects produced by the properties of a substance are, in Elkins’ view, inseparable from the substance itself and constitute its “body”. While painting is an act of transformation, Elkins demonstrates that the point might not be to transform the subject into paint; the point may simply be transformation itself.

Nest of Salt presents work by six artists that all deal, in some part, with themes of transformation, deconstruction and illusion.

Amanda Houchen studies the relationship between illusionism and abstraction through her paintings. Playing with the spatial properties of painting using division, colour and light, Houchen creates optical illusions in her paintings with the placement of flat geometric shapes, fused with more organic forms and structures.

Tim Ralston’s practice deals with deconstructing painting to its constituent parts. Focusing on the support and surface of painting, Ralston’s frugal approach utilises salvaged and reclaimed materials.

Maggie Williams explores themes of cultural identity and the effects of second-generation diaspora. Considering the fractured, contradictory experience of belonging, Williams uses a wide array of media, from playfully reappropriating found objects to challenging the confines of more traditional techniques such as embroidery. Her process-based work tries to make sense of the liminal space between the two cultures.

Richard Graville’s practice focuses on cross-species colour codes crucial to our survival when life is dangerous. Graville has done extensive research into evolutionary biology to understand how we share this colour language. Reducing unnecessary detail to make us more conscious of how our perceptions operate, he builds up his paint surfaces in thin coats of Flashe and acrylic paint. Each element of his paintings is masked resulting in precise edges and raised zones.

Stephen Buckeridge looks at painting as a process that is constantly being re-negotiated using gestures and marks which suggest liminal spaces where traces of activity sit between absence and presence or something in-between.

George Chapman deals with urban spaces that have frequently become derelict and
imbued with a haunted sense of failure, emptiness, and nostalgia. In his paintings, Chapman uses colours that are emotive and create a subjective impression of the derelict space, as though viewing it from memory or in a dream. In this sense, Chapman’s works are about blight and disintegration, but also about the fine line between the evocative nature of memory and the unsettling feeling that you are permanently estranged from home.