Sarah Roberts & Mark Jackson in conversation with Paul O'Kane

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Torremolinos-Tableaux-Tongue-Twister (After Sun) by Sarah Roberts and Face Is The Closest by Mark Jackson are now open and will run until 6th May. 

On Friday 28th April the artists will discuss the exhibition and their respective practices with artist, writer and lecturer Paul O'Kane; the conversation will begin promptly at 6:30 pm.

Block 336 presents Torremolinos-Tableaux-Tongue-Twister (After Sun), a new site-specifc installation by Sarah Roberts and the frst solo presentation of the artist’s work.

Sarah Roberts collects surfaces, and her practice demonstrates an ongoing interest in the momentary encounters with the actuality of the world – primarily with the visible surface of architecture, landscape and the body.

In Torremolinos Tableaux Tongue Twister (After Sun), the surface of the popular tourist destinationTorremolinos has been transformed into a feshy, fashing place of red limbs in lycra suits, slipping and sliding out of swimming pools and dripping down rendered walls. Provenance of place is not hidden, but also not overtly explained as at the work goes way beyond representation. (After Sun) is the second stanza fromTorremolinos. First exhibited in 2016 as part of the BAS8 Associates programme at HaHa Gallery, Southampton, the same work has been re-cast for Block 336 in a blood-shot, late-night form.

On entering the gallery, the viewer is invited to investigate an environment of red excess. Two tons of ruddy gravel spilled like a failing fat tongue stretches out through the space. Hand-cast plaster pieces, found objects, glass, rubber and glitter are nonsensical material utterances, and large-format images of everyday surfaces have been smoothed over the existing gallery walls and foors. In creating these landscapes, vistas or refexive objects, Roberts wants us to consider the reality of our constructed surfaces and how they inform the narratives we create. She terms this approach, ‘a casual politic’ that instead of ‘shouting the odds’ – creates a vantage point from which to gaze out onto the terror and appetite of our newly made realities.

Block 336 is pleased to present Face Is Te Closest the frst solo exhibition of paintings by London-based artist, Mark Jackson.

In his intensely complex and multi-layered oil paintings, Mark Jackson explores the many qualities of the lone human subject. Broadly inspired by the history of fgure painting, his distinctive personal vision re-situates the human form in a new imaginary realm, presenting us with a series of intense and meticulously rendered portraits.

There is a subtle, yet fundamental philosophical dimension to Jackson's take on the face. Te legible face is one that signifes in order to communicate – it is the chief signifer in an ordered and intelligible world. The illegible face by contrast, is one that refuses to signify in the usual way. This is the face that emotes ineffectively, whose characteristics are hard to 'read' and whose actions appear uncoordinated and misleading.

In his making process, images pass through different mediums, picking up traits and characteristics along the way. Often starting life as charcoal sketches on paper, they are converted to oil sketches, digital fles, prints and collages, and then back into paintings. This process simultaneously constructs and dismantles the face. If one phase establishes features or expressions, another will abstract and complicate them. For Jackson, this approach creates a chaos from which his singular visions emerge.

The Twentieth Century's tightrope between abstraction and figuration is a key infuence on Jackson's practice. He finds a powerful productivity in the indeterminacy and evasiveness it offers, and seeks to walk this line in order to face its consequences and re-defne its boundaries.