not holding the string

About

Not Holding the String draws together a collection of new work by artist Matthew James Kay. Sculptures, drawings and animations combine to form this exhibition inspired by occurrences of mistake-making, grace, doubt and faith in everyday life. Employing the stuff of common experience, Kay documents his experience of being human, a quest for the mysterious lurking in the mundane. Steering clear of definite meanings and prescriptive individual interpretations, Kay's work invites the viewer into a dialogue with the exhibition as a whole. Kay's assemblages are reconfigured items of the artist's own domestic life, left over paint from decorating, a ripped innertube, the bees that mysteriously appear (dead) in the living room each spring, a shoe rack there just wasn't space for, an ill-kept bonsai, tokens of affection. This ephemera/detritus comes together to create new objects for thought- disused props that take up the role of protagonists in new narratives. The artworks in Not Holding the String stand as markers in the artist's ongoing exploration of the domestic adventure as a place of frustration and a process of becoming. The works inhabit a transient place where personal and circumstantial transformations occur in wrestling with the desire for real adventure, balancing our need for contentment and joy with the reality of dissatisfaction and doubt. Matthew James Kay currently lives and works in South West London and has participated in group and solo shows at galleries in Liverpool, Nottingham, Leicester and London.