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7/10/2004

Michael Corkrey

Sarah Myerscough, London

Four years ago, Corkrey became disillusioned with working with the figure from life and refers to an anecdote that triggered his dramatic swing in subject. On the news was featured a lone canoeist who recklessly decided to circumnavigate the world. He was eventually rescued at the furthest point from land and this sense of isolation was a notion that appealed.

Initially seized by the obvious archetypal images, the concept of the sublime and painters such as Friedrich, Constable and Turner, he soon turned his attention to the contemporary photographers such as Stuart Klipper, Tom Millea and the painter Gerhard Richter, for their considered approach to the genre.

The seascape artist historically struggled to capture the infinite motion of dappled light and swelling tides en plein air. However, the invention of photography gave the painter a new freedom, and a vehicle for innovation, as it captures in a split second what the eye cannot hold. Corkrey starts to work from deliberately-scuffed photocopies of old badly-taken snapshots, deconstructing the image to distance himself from the subject. The re-construction is a laborious process; a slow and careful charting of the original image, from a distance almost photo-realist. The protean surface is quickly redefined through a series of awkward, crabby marks that are repetitive, continually throwing up the accidental. Organically, the composition builds, open vigorous marks form complex strata of geometric line, colour and abstract pattern, as paint takes hold and the viewer is submerged in mutated gesture, gritty, tough and powerful. Corkrey is not interested in place; it is immaterial. He actually has little affinity with the sea - it is solely an opportunity to work on his own, a conceptual understanding of the innate and its profound primal links to the unconscious. We are led away from the pure seascape image to a deeper insight into the artist’s psyche.

In these monumental pieces the viewer is consumed with the life of the work as it floods out of the painting through the dramatically sculptured surface. The paintings are fluid, sometimes ugly - battered, scraped, covered in wax and brutalised as painted and graphite marks are pushed to the limit. These paintings are real, ultimately beautiful, poetic but not romantic.

Sarah Myerscough Fine Art
15-16 Brooks Mews London W1K 4DS
Opening Hours: Mon-Fri 10-6, Sat 12-3

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