THOM GORST – RUINS OF EMPIRE
2013-02-25Drawing inspiration from the early work of the Boyle Family and sharing their concerns for the pictorial quality of the everyday – and from the current interest in ruination and urban exploration, this work re-presents and re-aestheticises marks made by rust, salt, wear, abrasion and contingent alteration. His work draws our attention back to the sea, and is a fitting exhibition to be held in a warehouse gallery that is itself so redolent with memories of trade and the business of Empire.
It was suggested early in the study that he should make the marks `of an architect’ in response to the experience of visiting these sites of dereliction. It was not clear how an architect typically might make marks, unless these were to be measured or orthogonal; certainly privileging the visual, and delineating the boundaries of space, rather than the gradations of texture, of accretions and of contingent archaeology. It was an unplanned part of the academic unfolding of the subject that in late 2008 the first paintings were made.
Exhibition runs through to March 31st, 2013
Anise Gallery
13a Shad Thames
London
SE1 2PU
