Neutrality isn’t inert. It’s alive with nuance.

There is no denying the superficial meaning of this exhibition title  – these works are gritty. But move beyond the surface and there is deeper significance: fortitude, patience, tolerance, and registers of experience, which coalesce to form a memory corpus. Within this body of memory, dualities become active as indicators of experience, then|now, significance|indifference, distinct|indistinct. Perhaps most significant within any body of memories is the neutral space those memories occupy; distanced from their time, but not of this time; outside yet bound to current experiences of the moment.

“…the Neutral is the shimmer…whose aspect, perhaps whose meaning, is subtly modified according to the angle of the subject’s gaze.”

This quote by Roland Barthes presents a neutral which is not static but a neutral which is activated by a point of view, making the neutral not something that is inert, but a lively position which shimmers with nuance and shifting slippage. The Neutral is a space of mutability.

The works in this exhibition exemplify this mutable Neutral. They present the fortitude of persistence within the memory corpus: from the struggle of learning the imposition of rules, to visible evidence of the deterioration of time, to the repetitive gesture that leaves a collateral trace, to the haphazard mark processed into a mark of intent. The neutrality of these works lies not only in their monochromatic colour, but also in their indistinct surfaces. It’s in this space of neutrality that the viewer can delve deep into nuance. This very indistinctness is where real distinction can be found amongst the singular marks and topographies in the grit.

arthouse1.    |   45 Grange Road. London SE1 3BH    |   Director : Rebecca Fairman    |   Tel: 07713 189249    |   [email protected]   |   SE1 Art Map