Sinking Feeling

About

Joe O’Rourke, Noah Pryke, and Harry Whitelock present Sinking Feeling, a group show in Open House Hackney. “Sinking Feeling” – with its allusion to living anxiously in a world on the brink of social collapse, ecological disaster, and political upheaval – is an exhibition bringing together painting, collage and drawing, inviting the viewer to explore interiority on the edge. 

Joe O’Rourke’s work is a collection of responses to the world we live in, delivered with a strong dose of irony and a wry sense of humour. Imagining new and alternative realities using materials from the everyday, the work is informed by an array of influences including adverts, overheard conversations, song lyrics, novels, films, and found objects. As viewers, we piece together the works like a game, each painting or drawing another piece in a puzzle in his constructed world. O’Rourke utilises recurring motifs in his practice including dice, cards, ladders, and the dizzying scale of skyscrapers set against the comparatively minute scale of humankind. He is intrigued by the construction of illusion in set and theatre design - in fact, two artists familiar with stage design, Paula Rego and Lubaina Himid, are great inspirations for the artist – as he strives to piece together the props and narratives from the everyday and the imagination.

Noah Pryke’s monochromatic ultramarine paintings often depict interior domestic scenes; he describes the settings as “intimate, private, personal spaces.” In this respect, the work is an expression of the artist's feelings and emotions. Preferring to work on large-scale canvas, Pryke mixes his oils with an array of mediums, building up thin and malleable layers. In the background of the paintings, you’ll notice that the scenes are almost always in the presence of the moon, stars, or the sea; everpresent elements that provide much solace and comfort to the artist. The scenes are decidedly depicted at dusk or night; a time in which Pryke believes “offers an ethereal sense.” Pryke prefers to limit his palette, using greens and reds as underlayers before mixing these hues with warm blues. 

Harry Whitelock's artistic impulse often begins outside of the studio. The series of drawings presented in Sinking Feeling began in response to a pile of bones found on the bed of the River Thames in central London. Driven to capture something of the primordial physicality of the found objects; their history and earthiness, there is an ambiguity between abstraction and figuration in the work. Flashes of recognisable body parts, an anchored ship, felled trees in a wooded landscape are elements that dissolve into the breadth of colour and line in the compositions. The work arrives at a point that could not have been premeditated: Whitelock’s material process is reactive and reflective as he responds to each layer of painted surface before the image emerges. As with all the artists' work in the show, there is a calm serenity amongst depicted chaos. Sinking Feeling is a show that investigates the restorative potential of disorder to help explore the fantastical, personal identity, the natural world, memory, and history.

Exhibition runs until Sunday 27th March, 12-6pm weekdays and 12-4pm weekends (2pm-4pm on Sunday 20th)

Text by Sofia Hallstrom