All Over Again
Amaya Suberviola, Henry Tyrrell, Harry Markusse and Eric Cruikshank
Exhibition Dates: November 16, 2023 – January 13, 2024
Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat, 12-5 PM | 11 Church Street, NW8 8EE, London, UK
All Over Again brings together four young contemporary painters: Amaya Suberviola, Henry Tyrrell, Harry Markusse and Eric Cruikshank. All four artists reimagine the depiction of inner and outer landscapes and everyday objects while infusing non-figurative and non-narrative painting with a fresh perspective. All Over Again alludes to the seemingly inextinguishable fascination with the medium of painting, its historic weight and constant revival, also in the abstract genre and its different directions, the formalistic as well as the more intuitive styles.
Amaya Suberviola (b.1993, Spain) draws inspiration from the perception of our world in the digital age. Focusing on the imagery of digital screens and their significance in everyday life, Suberviola creates abstract paintings that resemble superimposed computer desktops. Suberviola's paintings serve as handmade screenshots, with digital media replacing traditional sketches in her creative process. The actual subject matter bears no relevance to the artist; she regards any digital image as raw material to be transformed and reimagined. The fragmented imagery is obliterated with thick layers of paint, revealing only selected sections in the interstitial spaces between tabs and windows.
Harry Markusse, (b.1990, Netherlands) recent works convey a measured interplay of colour and form, movement, light and space. Markusse develops his abstract geometrical compositions by working directly on the canvas with tape and acrylic paint. His visual vocabulary arises from the subconscious, Markusse often recognises shapes as something he had seen before only after they had found their place on the canvas. In his recent series of 'stacked' paintings, Markusse incorporates sketches, cut-outs, and studies, literally stacking them up within plexiglass boxes. These works present not only the final surface image but also include the journey that led to it. Markusse’s compositions bear subtle imperfections despite their graphic and formal language, which infuse his paintings with a human touch, emphasizing once more the process as well as the handmade quality.
Henry Tyrrell’s, (b.1984, UK) works oscillate between control and spontaneity. Sourcing compositional elements exclusively from his sketches depicting memories of landscape elements, Tyrrell experiments with shapes, colours and movement while creating his large-scale gestural paintings. In his recent series, the dominant presence of shades of blue and green serves as a symbolic representation of what he terms 'pockets of sublime' –the natural elements within busy urban settings, serving as a personal connection to his childhood recollections. Tyrell’s titles, often quite poetic, are important parts of his work, All Over Again being title-giving for the exhibition. The painting references the reiterated non-geometric approach to abstract painting, associated with Jackson Pollock’s works in the 1940s and the subsequent movement of Abstract Expressionism.
Eric Cruikshank’s (b.1975, UK) colour gradient paintings take landscape, or its atmosphere, as a starting point of his practice. Using an objective palette tied to the Scottish landscape, colour acts as a vehicle to reveal the underlying points of reference. However, Cruikshanks’ works are not literal presentations, the focus is on the emotive qualities of a place. Careful and meticulous colour layering creates an ambience of calmness and serenity that demands quiet contemplation. The passage from one colour to the next is blurred and effusive without any visible recess just like an immaculate sunrise. This impression is not surprising as all of Cruikshank’s paintings relate to nature. His work oscillates between opacity and translucency, between representation and abstraction exploring notions of colour and light in a painterly space while investigating the process of painting itself.