Exhibitions / Solo
Gravity Can Be a Cruel Mistress
Paton Gallery, 282 Richmond Road, London
16 March – 23 April 2000
Gravity Can Be a Cruel Mistress brought together a selection of paintings from the Repetitions series, developed between 1998 and 2000. The exhibition presented works from across the series, exploring recurring themes of media, politics, consumer culture, conflict and the changing landscape of contemporary Britain.
Although only a small number of works are reproduced here, the exhibition included paintings from several related groups within Repetitions. Together, these works helped establish a visual language that continued to develop throughout the Repetitions project and has informed much of my practice ever since."
The paintings shown at Paton Gallery moved between humour, unease and social observation. Works such as Mir, Apes and Refuge used familiar images from news, advertising and popular culture as starting points, reworking them through repeated painted surfaces, altered contexts and shifts in scale.
About Paton Gallery
Paton Gallery was directed by Graham Paton, a London-based contemporary art dealer associated with the promotion of young and mainly figurative artists. The gallery provided an important independent platform for contemporary painting at a time when the landscape of British art was undergoing significant change.
For me, exhibiting at Paton Gallery marked an important early moment in the public life of the Repetitions paintings, placing the work in a London context and allowing the different strands of the series to be seen together.
Installation Views
Selected Artworks
Selected artworks from the exhibition.
Mir
1999 · mixed media on canvas · 180 × 150 cm
Private Collection
Apes
1999 · mixed media on canvas · 165 × 140 cm
Private Collection
Refuge
1999 · mixed media on canvas · 175 × 140 cm
Exhibition Catalogue
Exhibition catalogue, Paton Gallery, London, 2000.
Legacy
Looking back, Gravity Can Be a Cruel Mistress now marks an important point in the development of my practice. Many of the paintings first shown at Paton Gallery have since entered public and private collections, while others have become key works within the Repetitions archive. Seen together today, the exhibition records the emergence of ideas that continued to inform my work over the following decades.