The Contemporary London
London Art Fair 2018

"A regular train journey I make, takes me out of London and through the common and woodland of Surrey. There’s a curious bit of the journey where the train lines intersect and create a small island, a discreet wooded outcrop bordered on all sides by train tracks. I wonder if anyone ever sets foot on this small piece of land. This unremarkable tract of landscape is in some ways wilder than the dense woods and windswept commons that sweep past the window. I realize l will never walk through this piece of land and in all likelihood I will never walk through any of the trees I view on this journey. I’ve made this journey hundreds of times now and I’m yet to get off before my destination. Like so many…I all too often experience the landscape at a remove - through the window, the screen, or the page."

Gary Colclough

The appropriation and layering of imagery is central to the practice of all four artists. These layers may be digitally or physically collaged, or intricately drawn and worked into. The artists willfully recreate, reimagine and redraw the narratives of the image. Consequently, distant landscapes and still objects are romanticized; nature is delicately crafted and re-presented, infused with nostalgia and undefined by time or space. The landscapes are idyllic, dream-like, fantastical, sublime, and celebratory. However, we are also presented with imaginary visions of ‘elsewhere’, other distant, melancholic worlds and the uncanny. The images present contemplations of our world, how we inhabit it and an ongoing dialogue about the human condition.