The Classical

Aisha Christison / Grant Foster / Kate Groobey / Alex Gibbs / Jonathan Lux / Jessie Makinson / Eleanor Moreton / Freya Douglas-Morris / Leon Pozniakow

11 November – 20 November 2016

Preview: Thursday 10 November 2016 6-9pm

Gallery open Thursday - Sunday, 12-6pm

A group exhibition examining contemporary painting and its relationship with art history 

I just left the hotel amnesia…

The artists involved in The Classical represent a snapshot of contemporary painting that neither adheres to nor rejects ideals of classical balance, harmony, order and symmetry. Rather, it absorbs them as part of a wider lexicon of resources to be drawn from. We live in an image-saturated culture, the art of the past mixes seamlessly with art of the present. The canon of art history can, today, be flicked through on any mobile device, assimilated, stripped for parts, reconfigured. It is neither something to be bound by nor reacted against. Sometimes we see direct quotation in the work of these artists, more often we find allusion, a fleeting reference in paint like a wink of an eye to the clued-in viewer. This is a quieter shift towards integrity over fashion, an investigation of timelessness in painting over the fleeting sparkle of marketing.