The Rest

There is an internal tension between reason and chaos in the work of Jill Mulleady, which as with the other artists in the show, conveys an alternative, dreamlike state. The subjects are shadowy figures, who conjure up troubled psychological imagery in an effort to exorcise inner drives. They appear transfixed in a deep-seated desire that is not altogether apparent, nor virtuous. In Touch me Not (2018) a Surrealist female figure contorts a sinewy body and an erect reptilian tongue in a suspended pose, hovering in mid-air. Scale-like leopard spots twist around the body, which the artist views as the intangible demands of life—covering one’s skin like a heavy coat.

Jeanette Mundt’s paintings in the exhibition are from a series of works featuring poppy flowers, the resin of which is used to make heroin. Works from the series reference the drug, as well as van Gogh’s paintings of the flower, a subject he used often in the last troubled years of his life. The paintings here feature a field of poppies in Mexico, an image retrieved from the internet. Mundt overlays the quotidian image with a drawn pattern of repeated poppies, hidden in which we can see a woman reclining sideways, asleep in the field. While the initial reaction might be a romantic notion of lazing in a field of flowers, the mood is sinister when considering the poppies’ psychoactive properties. As in all her work, Mundt’s loose, expressive brushstroke separates the image from straightforward appropriation, and familiar or historical images become unrecognizable from their original source material.

Large Kimono with Yoko at the Bar is part of a series of ‘cleavage’ paintings by Nolan Simon. Begun in 2013, these paintings take images the artist discovers on his social media feeds, which are then painted as if they were printed on garments, with part of the wearer’s chest exposed. The resulting image has an obvious formal composition, but upon further investigation reveals its underlying tableau. The backdrop image in this work is of a small child asleep next to a bar—a parental photo of a child’s innocence juxtaposed with flesh and breast. Nolan references the cleavage works as akin to the phrase “wearing your heart on your sleeve”, in which candid, private moments are revealed and become something to be proudly displayed.

The subject matter for Issy Wood paintings come directly from high-end fashion and auction catalogues, where objects of once personal significance to others are advertised for sale. Wood chooses to paint the objects which she desires and thus exercises her materialistic tendencies through their rendering. However, by adjusting the colors—the original image is often dramatically lit and placed upon stark white backgrounds and are instead painted here in muted, hazy tones of brown or grey—and by placing the contents slightly askew, the original is irrevocably altered. In The Rest (2018), which lends this group show its title, a Judith Leiber handbag is depicted lying open on its side and at this angle and palette its exterior zebra print gives the illusion of an animal in repose. Amenities! Python! The Artillery of Heaven! (2018) also features a high-end handbag that Wood at one point coveted. Sitting squarely in the foreground of the composition, the snakeskin purse appears as abstracted pattern. It is upon stepping away from the canvas that material possessions—perhaps the artist’s own or those of a neighbor—come into focus and we can see the juxtaposition of a Jan Jansen boot tilted onto its side, appearing to walk vertically across the canvas.