SAM WINDETT – MOTORWAY IV
2017-10-30Themes of time, movement and repetition, partly taken from the artist’s memories of driving through the South West of England, resonate throughout the work.
Multiple layers of paint, charcoal and textured marks combining torn and cut paper intertwine, evoking broken landscapes caught in a hinterland between abstraction, narrative and representation. Physical and ephemeral aspects of road travel are at play in the work, from the scrambled black and white surfaces of the wet road to the static of a car radio and the surrounding darkness of a night drive. References to radio compound not only through painterly representations of white noise, but in dial-like forms and the repeated letters FM and AM. The recurring motif of the disc doubles up both as suns and moons or the headlights of approaching cars. In the smaller canvases, cell structures resemble the veins of vascular leaves, plants or invented ribcages. Seemingly organic forms contradict their evolution from the motif of fragmented mechanical bodies in earlier paintings of aeroplanes or drones.
Opposite – Motorway IV — FM/AM, 2017
Exhibition runs through to November 5th, 2017
The Approach
1st Floor, 47 Approach Road
Bethnal Green
E2 9LY
London
