John Crossley LG is in this 3 person exhibition in Norwich.
Mandell’s Gallery, Elm Hill, Norwich, NR3 1HN
Esmond Bingham | Tony Casement | John Crossley
Opening, Sat 1 July 12pm – 4pm
Exhibition continues until 29 July 2023
Tues–Sat 10am–5pm
EVENT: Artist Talk Thurs 20 July 6pm-7pm
A Shared Difference
Esmond Bingham, Tony Casement, John Crossley.
On first encounter, you may get the impression that these three artists have little in common. What they share are similar generational, art and societal influences that informed their initial art activity. Having studied at art school in the early seventies, they lived through a period of dynamic change and development in the artistic landscape. For each of these artists, the work is led by engagement with the materials, whether subject follows process or vice versa. The finished piece has undergone a process that renders it quite different from its beginning. While each artist makes references, they do not make descriptions.
Esmond Bingham doesn’t draw as a preliminary to making in 3D preferring to launch directly into play with a chosen material. Recently he has been using birch plywood or bamboo, sometimes painted, sometimes not. His relief and free-standing constructions have a lightness of touch that often indicates some kind of take off, transition or potential. They can be illusory or even contradictory. ‘Any emerging work will embody an idea from me while it’s temperament and guise may reflect attributes intrinsic to the material’.
Tony Casement shows here a group of works on paper. Having identified with the hapless knight and his hopeless quest in Cervantes famous novel Don Quixote, he on occasion includes cut holes, uses eyelets, applies fluorescent paint and makes other transgressive actions that objectify the work and locate it to the surrounding space giving it a physical presence and its own identity.
John Crossley’s joyful kaleidoscopic pieces are acrylic on paper mounted on support. These are sharply defined areas of intense colour giving the paintings a jewel-like quality that holds the surrounding space and belies their intimate size. Surface nuance, colour and touch form the architecture of composition here, with teasing hints of narrative that underly the structure of the paintings. The balancing of elements is informed by his early life as a sculptor, but the flat planes are emphatically two dimensional.