Oil Shale
Matthew Musgrave
October 17th - November 8th 2009
-
Mountainesque III, 2008-2009.
Oil on oak, 10.5 x 10.5 cm -
Puddingston, 2009.
Oil on mdf, 19 x 12 cm -
Normal Fault, 2008.
Oil on oak, 17 cm ø -
ARW, 2008-2009
Oil on oak, 14 cm ø
For the final exhibition in its 2009 programme Supplement present paintings by Matthew Musgrave.
Each painting entails a series of different approaches accumulated over numerous sittings. In this period the works are left open for as long as possible, put aside and returned to, eliciting doubt and experimentation. Their construction is analogous to assemblage; gathering a wealth of strategies that sit in dialogue upon the support. The paintings appear as amulets, stones or rock-formations that have weathered and gathered moss: a function of the paint's materiality and application. They have a velvety or shard-like appearance that entices the viewer to excavate each tiny fissure of their intensely worked surface.
Musgrave is concerned with the slowing-down of the work's encounter. As such the works resist direct readings and gradually reveal themselves over time. In this they respond to the specificity of paintings of this scale; the problematic demand of their physical size and their potential to engage the phenomenological shift of perception that operates through the distance at which they are seen.
Within the exhibition space the paintings are installed with sensitivity to weight and rhythm, demanded by the irregular shape of the supports. They hang gracefully off- centre producing tension and specific spacious relationships that reverberate within the gallery's internal architecture.