MATT BRYANS
2013-01-21Bryans has recently transferred his process of erasure from newspaper cuttings to brick. As with his newspaper works he has taken a pre-existing, familiar material and eroded the surface, revealing new forms. Bryans has not only used a local material but also one that is heavily associated with Englishness. Bricks are the foundation of England’s built environment and were the cornerstone of the industrial revolution. The old lives of these bricks, found in bombsites and other places in and around London, are carved into an odd, organic demeanour. Freed from their mortar they are sculpted into something that appears to have been eroded by nature.
The newspaper collages are Bryans’ take on the ancient English theme of landscape. The artist has described them as “annihilated landscapes”. They are a profusion of archetypal and empty spaces suffused with a melancholy presence. In Bryans’ work a poetic transformation takes place, an alchemy with contemporary and banal found materials, producing something suggestive of worlds that exist in some legendary or fictional past tense. Examining his works there is a sense that we are penetrating the surface of things, getting under the skin of the world. His hallucinatory newspaper landscapes also seem to reflect political issues buried in our contemporary landscape.
Exhibition runs February 13th to April 7th, 2013
Kate MacGarry
27 Old Nichol Street
London
E2 7HR
