Exhibition

Peter Matthews: Surroundings

24 May 2013 – 22 Jun 2013

Regular hours

Friday
10:00 – 18:00
Saturday
11:00 – 17:00
Tuesday
10:00 – 18:00
Wednesday
10:00 – 18:00
Thursday
10:00 – 18:00

Cost of entry

Free

Save Event: Peter Matthews: Surroundings

I've seen this

People who have saved this event:

close

Beers London

London
England, United Kingdom

Address

Travel Information

  • Barbican, Farringdon, St. Pauls
  • Farringdon
Directions via Google Maps Directions via Citymapper
Event map

Peter Matthews: Surroundings

About

In the broadest sense, Matthews' practice concerns the natural world that is mapped and recorded through his own physical processes that draw attention to the futility of the individual and his action in the greater environment. The resulting works combine a fascination with the mystical and sublime, articulated through an obsessive and wholly subjective recording of the lull of the tides. Matthews is captivated by a repetitive and insatiable desire to understand elements of the natural world that - although calculable and explainable through modern science - seem to evade our emotive comprehension: who we are and what is our purpose in the universe is always an emotive concept, and despite calculable reasoning, Matthew's reminds us that, as humans, we operate as solipsistic and rather insignificant remarks on a much greater temporal and spatial plane. Through the simplicity of the works, Matthew's comments as much on performance and 'the conceptual' as he does the two-dimensional picture plane. For these are drawings that are not really about drawing at all, but rather about man's inability to recapture the momentary sublime held in the vastness of nature, the bleak romanticism in the ocean as it consumes and intoxicates. Through extended hours (sometimes Matthews will abscond himself for up to 9 hours, adrift alone at sea,) Matthews is working in real time through a very direct approach and immediate relationship with the ocean, where it becomes evident that his process is so much less about draftsmanship or material and more about an idea connected to nature and personal spirituality: through the drawings, Matthews seeks to question and challenge the nature of the image as something that requires subject matter. He questions us, as to whether the drawing can capture an essence, a thought, a momentary fleeting feeling.

What to expect? Toggle

Comments

Have you been to this event? Share your insights and give it a review below.