Nicky Hodge |
Artists Statement
In this recent series of abstract
minimalist paintings the act of painting itself is under investigation. Taking
Roland Barthes’ idea of the city as text as a starting point, some works have a
tenuous connection to the most marginal corners of urban space – the edges of a
rooftop, a section of pipe or perhaps a remote aerial view. Others seem to have
no obvious representational reference but are presented as part of an
unfinished series in which a variety of different marks and layers as well as a
palpable sense of the edges of the works means that we see these paintings as
objects. The surface is all important: like skin it is shown as a living and
breathing organism whether smoothed over, pitted, plumped up or flayed and the
spatial arrangement – some butted up, some high, others low – prompts an
enquiry into the nature of the relationships between them. The allusive, playful titles highlight the sense
of the transitional or provisional nature of painting which deals with nuance
and the impossibility of ever capturing or forcing a particular reading.