Offerings (II)
25/07/21 - 29/08/21
Raymonde Beraud (b.1989, Cyprus), works predominantly in painting. Her paintings act as a consequence, a record of a repeated process of layering, addition, and subtraction, tracing a journey that has no mark governing beginning or ending. The schematic elements of her practice that derive from a graphic rather than a 'painterly' understanding, a line or a set of lines, lead the way for colour or certain gestures to unfold. Her direction is continually conditioned by her response to each gesture. The duality of the painterly antagonising the more industrially devised, digital-looking marks born through the application of unconventional tools across the surface, retain a sense of immediacy and accident alongside more constructed painterly passages.
James Campion (b.1987, London) has developed a sequential process to his painting practise, drawing from a range of compositional inspiration from commercial windows and other architectural features to transcriptions of historical art sources. This current series acts as an hommage to artists he champions. Peter Halley, John Hoyland, Howard Hodgkin, Alan Davie and Piet Mondrian all provide compositional foundation to these paintings.
Upon this template Campion overlays a range of painting techniques; starting with a solid mid-tone ground and a feint structural drawing, a base ‘fill-in’ layer is then applied which typically plays with varying paint transparencies and acts to knock certain areas back and bring other areas forward relative to the original ground. Finally the pieces are finished with a layer of slightly embossed, glossy dots which can serve to both emphasise and contrast with the structure of the first layer.
Whilst the general process is quite pre-determined the sub-decisions on colour are very much calculated along the way. This can be thought of as a process of iteration, in which the aim is to navigate towards a balanced conclusion, constantly reacting to the result of each preceding decision.
Naomi Workman (b.1990, Somerset). Central to her work is a focus on female labour in domestic settings. Her pencil and ink drawings of resolute women reclaim ownership of the female form, whilst her recent paintings of invented subjects play with the juxtaposition of focused labour versus savoured moments of rest.