War Hammer - Francesca Blomfield

About

War Hammer brings together a recent body of work that exploits painting’s potential to conjure imagined realities. A series of watercolour posters present a pictorial lineage of an envisioned aviation disaster, these ‘Best bits from the Black box’ translate the (orange) black box’s data into text and image to voice an unknown dissemination of images from this non-experience. The exhibition also includes other paintings that present a weird register of experiences and thoughts. The weird suggests something supernatural sometimes connected with fate, an ectoplasmic hunch of things that may come.
 
War Hammer continues a focus on elusive subjects such as new age phenomena and hidden worlds, constructing associations between common ideas and beliefs where systems utilise apparently banal or disparate fragments of information. An arbitrary selection of affects share symbolic connections with subject matter. Borrowing from structures such as diagrams, compressed cultural artefacts and found instructional text there is a focus on protocols and exchanges. The practice is contained by paintings and ephemera; these often involve representations of knowledge production.
 
 Francesca Blomfield is a visual artist based in London. She was awarded this exhibition as part of the 2016 ArtWorks Open prize. Other awards include the Jerwood painting fellowship that culminated in a UK touring show 2016-2017. Recent group exhibitions include Mall Malaise, Kings Mall residency, Yes Please, Bussey Building, On & Off, Proyecto Medellin, Mexico city, My own private Idaho, Chalton gallery and Miami Vice at Transition gallery. Her first solo show International treaty was at the Horse Hospital in 2015.