Matthew Smith
05 Jun - 28 Jul 2012
MATTHEW SMITH
Plumbing
5 June - 28 July 2012
Having none of my own, I borrowed personae. I asked myself: ‘What would Fat Tulip do, with his messy, gurgling garden of a life? What would Roobarb do, with his frenzied, scrambled, dog’s eye perception of the world? What would someone who is bored with melancholy, and bored with elegance do?’ ‘I think I’d better hurry up and tidy up the kitchen sink.’
Plumbing is an exhibition of works based on an idiosyncratic network of intuitions, latent references and influences. Counter culture fanzine artwork of the late 1970s, a British animated television series, and The Berserkers (the ancient Norse warriors said to have fought in an uncontrolled trance like fury during battle) have, amongst others, all made an impact on the work at some point.
I found myself collecting photographs of the pipework underneath domestic sinks, somehow regarding them as having human characteristics, a relationship to the body and evocative of certain emotional states. Not so much a specific line of thought than a mess of intuitive leaps and unsubstantiated connections. I’m interested in the way that, by scaling up the image, by making it blunt and direct, it becomes political. Just as the other works resist extending meanings beyond themselves, Think arrives with a sense of brute realism (albeit said with a short tongue).
Underpinning the work is a mindful resistance to certain ideologies, be they real or imaginary. There is a focus on the immediate physical force with which the work is produced. Unstretched canvases are primed sufficiently enough to provide a surface on which to carry out an action.
The canvas is slashed horizontally at the bottom to disrupt the pictorial plane. This repeated act is intended to suggest that these works are not paintings or representations ‘of’ something, but rather they are ongoing, subjective actions to be read in terms of their physical attributes and as the outcome of activity.
Mirroring this jerky, slightly manic physical action is Fanfare, a structure made from dustbins lashed together with rope. I want to make sculpture that has to be read in terms of activity, rather than a wider set of references, to eliminate the possibility of a ‘surplus value’ of meaning and to lead an observer no further than the immediacy with which the objects are held together. Importantly, these sculptures are made on site, and with little prior planning. I want to be faithful to a certain representation of the production process, of how it feels to make art, an impossible world that constantly switches between the ecstatic and the neurotic.
Tales from Fat Tulip’s Garden. Central Independent Television, UK, 1985-87.
Roobarb. BBC1, UK, 1974.
Logic, Lora. Aerosol Burns, Essential Logic EP, Virgin records, 1979.
Plumbing
5 June - 28 July 2012
Having none of my own, I borrowed personae. I asked myself: ‘What would Fat Tulip do, with his messy, gurgling garden of a life? What would Roobarb do, with his frenzied, scrambled, dog’s eye perception of the world? What would someone who is bored with melancholy, and bored with elegance do?’ ‘I think I’d better hurry up and tidy up the kitchen sink.’
Plumbing is an exhibition of works based on an idiosyncratic network of intuitions, latent references and influences. Counter culture fanzine artwork of the late 1970s, a British animated television series, and The Berserkers (the ancient Norse warriors said to have fought in an uncontrolled trance like fury during battle) have, amongst others, all made an impact on the work at some point.
I found myself collecting photographs of the pipework underneath domestic sinks, somehow regarding them as having human characteristics, a relationship to the body and evocative of certain emotional states. Not so much a specific line of thought than a mess of intuitive leaps and unsubstantiated connections. I’m interested in the way that, by scaling up the image, by making it blunt and direct, it becomes political. Just as the other works resist extending meanings beyond themselves, Think arrives with a sense of brute realism (albeit said with a short tongue).
Underpinning the work is a mindful resistance to certain ideologies, be they real or imaginary. There is a focus on the immediate physical force with which the work is produced. Unstretched canvases are primed sufficiently enough to provide a surface on which to carry out an action.
The canvas is slashed horizontally at the bottom to disrupt the pictorial plane. This repeated act is intended to suggest that these works are not paintings or representations ‘of’ something, but rather they are ongoing, subjective actions to be read in terms of their physical attributes and as the outcome of activity.
Mirroring this jerky, slightly manic physical action is Fanfare, a structure made from dustbins lashed together with rope. I want to make sculpture that has to be read in terms of activity, rather than a wider set of references, to eliminate the possibility of a ‘surplus value’ of meaning and to lead an observer no further than the immediacy with which the objects are held together. Importantly, these sculptures are made on site, and with little prior planning. I want to be faithful to a certain representation of the production process, of how it feels to make art, an impossible world that constantly switches between the ecstatic and the neurotic.
Tales from Fat Tulip’s Garden. Central Independent Television, UK, 1985-87.
Roobarb. BBC1, UK, 1974.
Logic, Lora. Aerosol Burns, Essential Logic EP, Virgin records, 1979.