STEPHEN HARWOOD: London Fields

About

A group of paintings in Stephen Harwood’s distinctive style, straddling real life and dream (or is it nightmare?) Where the exact depiction, the clarity of the strokes, pulls us towards a sense of something missing. Maybe here and there the turbulence of the skies should be a clue. Look again.

These are views of East London, just round the corner; but not ones we’ll necessarily recognise. A faceless terrace; the abandoned site of industrial struggle. You’d never know by looking.

Graffiti’d walls, padlocked gates, paths to who knows where. And messages everywhere, spelled-out calls to action, warnings, or secret codes we can take as misguided decoration of the public space, or the worst sort of criminal effrontery.

These are places we walk past and ignore with the only sign of life the upper stories of a distant tower block. Also faceless. In another world, a green space, also unpeopled. And in the third of these worlds, left to our imagination, whatever it is that will replace every one of these solitudes, in days to come.

Keran James/Michael Keenan
Adapted from the exhibition text for Stephen Harwood - 'Gone Tomorrow', studio1.1 gallery, September 2021.

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Adapted from the exhibition text by Keran James/Michael Keenan for Stephen Harwood's exhibition 'GoneTomorrow', studio1.1, October 2021.

PRIVATE VIEW

Saturday 26th February 5 - 11pm

DJs Cedric & Munir