STRATA is a series of exhibitions that explore the "raw medium of paint". In STRATA:1, the first exhibition of the series curated by Sarah Cunningham, the artists use paint to explore the entwining theme of nature and humanity. The styles of the five artists are vividly juxtaposed, creating a startling but effective exhibition that, as a whole, seems to highlight how much humans impact our natural landscape...
Walking clockwise round the small exhibition room, you’re immediately struck by the differences between Sarah Cunningham’s and Martin Clarkson’s work. Cunningham opts for more pastel colours, depicting enigmatic landscapes that fall somewhere fantasy and reality. Contrastingly, Clarkson uses explosive, vibrant colours to explore wildly natural scenes. His work has a sombre theme running through it, with one painting showing a colourful jungle drenched in yellow light, with the start of a forest fire in the background. It’s easy to miss the fire in the painting at first, which hints at humanity's quiet and continual destruction of forest life.
Joshua Browitt throws himself completely into the abstract with his use of oils, acrylics and lacquers. His work focuses on the nature of paint itself, pouring different textures onto a canvas and manipulating it to bubble and crack. The end result is surprisingly earthy, with the paintings looking like crushed minerals, puddles of rain and clouds of fog. He described his work as a "testament of what paint can do over a period of time when left to its own devices."
Subtly different to these artists, Philip Clarke uses realism to capture snippets of urban landscapes on small squares of aluminium. His precise, delicate approach works to bring attention to unremarkable scenery, often set in late evening or early morning hours. This half-dark, half-light reproduction of scenery works as a reminder that even mundane, everyday scenes can be quietly beautiful.
Stepping away from landscapes entirely, Adam Waghorne takes a more Surrealist approach to painting. Waghorne uses bold brush strokes and predominantly dark colours to explore human nature. His work, titled with abstract concepts like Spectral, Tension and Through the Paradox of Being, features sad figures on bold backgrounds. These eerie forms work to highlight Waghorne’s underlying theme that our subconscious is more powerful and trustworthy than our conscious thought.
Although technology has paved the way for artists to explore mediums such as digital design and animation, paint remains a strong and visceral part of the modern art world. From the Berlin Wall graffiti to Banksy’s satirical activism, artists still use paint to explore and reflect on modern life. And that’s what the STRATA collective is here to celebrate.
STRATA:1 is the first in a collection of exhibitions, and runs at Surface Gallery until Saturday 10 March.
Surface Gallery website
We have a favour to ask
LeftLion is Nottingham’s meeting point for information about what’s going on in our city, from the established organisations to the grassroots. We want to keep what we do free to all to access, but increasingly we are relying on revenue from our readers to continue. Can you spare a few quid each month to support us?
