Trevor you’re moving in all directions.

About

Press release:

9 years ago in a studio on Coldhabour Lane more akin to a mausoleum with its dust and memories seldom unsettled. A Viennese gentleman arrived during a winter weekend – wearing a cowboy hat for a “sitting”. The results of his commission were tentatively outlined and, despite my anxiety to please, I soon discovered were negotiable.

The experience of the sitting was akin to a examination, of which my efforts at drawing were but a fragment of a brittle whole prone to dissipation, this self-appointed physician – the Viennese gentleman in the cowboy hat – sought to some extent to unite and encourage.

“Trevor you're moving in all directions” was a gentle rebuke during one of the sittings in which he seldom sat and seldom was silent. Where we differed was distilled in this rebuke that has stuck, echoed in my thoughts since and became something of a credo for my work.

The 15 works on display at the Torriano Meeting House were a fresh departure, that began for me last April. Restricted to the same size rectangles of archival board, the work demonstrates the co-opting of that rebuke into an all over aesthetic. I think of the work as pictures of a imagined insular zone, in which stockpiled marks, shapes and patterns are in a constant churn. With parts repeating, transgressing and collapsing, they're malevolently changeable puzzles, whose pieces were momentarily wrestled under control.
Torriano Meeting House 99 Torriano Avenue – Kentish Town – London NW5 2RX
Private view Tuesday April 9th 6pm – 8pm Open April 13th, 14th & 28th 10am – 4pm

Trevor Simmons (b. 1981, UK) works and lives in London. He studied at Middlesex University. He recently exhibited in 'This Year's Model 2019 (Part One) at Studio 1.1. (London) and has had solo exhibitions 'A Draughtman's Fist' (2011, London), 'City Promptings' (2012, New York) and some group shows. He has had collaborative projects published with writers Chris Gutkind (Options. 2010, The Knive Forks and Spoons Press) and Patrick Farmer (To Node and Undulate). Reductive Journal, Issue 4. 2014). And did the artwork for The Spires that in the Sunset Rise album ‘Curse the Traced Bird’ (2008).