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8/1/2003

Graeme Todd

Andrew Mummery Gallery, London

The Andrew Mummery Gallery is pleased to announce our third exhibition of the work of Graeme Todd, and his first in London since the success of his solo show, Space is Deep, at the Kunsthaus Glarus in Switzerland in 2002.

Lying somewhere between the realms of nature, memory and illusion, Graeme Todd's paintings fuse meticulous drawing with layers of incandescent coloured brushstrokes, and translucent glazes of poured varnish. Linear and planar elements are intricately collaged from a diverse and informed array of both everyday and art historical sources, from postcards, cuttings and tourist souvenirs, to the great Romantic paintings of the German masters and East Asian ink drawings. For Todd, landscape remains a place for the imagination, a quiet reflection on how fragmented memories may coalesce and metamorphose into a new and cohesive whole. From figuration to abstraction, from finite to infinite, Todd creates both a seductive materiality and rich complexity of spatial perception.

This exhibition is comprised predominantly of paintings made over the last year. After first visiting the Klontel Valley in Switzerland in 2001, Todd drew inspiration from the resplendent peaks, lakes and valleys of the landscape in the Canton of Glarus. Nowhere is this more beautifully expressed than in the centrepiece of the show, It is so Endless, 2002, a painting made in situ at the Kunsthaus Glarus prior to his exhibition there. Here, using only the sparest traces of felt-tip and ink line, Todd draws the craggy mountain peaks, lakes and hillside trees into a composition of perfect balance, invoking the great sublime landscapes of Casper David Friedrich. From the essential structure, Todd builds distance: strata of colour-field brushstrokes, glittering infusions of colour, fluid, expansive line, and abstracted blocks of paint that at the same time reveal and erase the drawing beneath. This tension through opposition is further refined with paintings such as Ruins of Rabenstein, 2002, where the layers are further compressed into a panoply of reflection and inflection. Todd references this to the process of crystallization, creating a magical, frozen world where dynamism is counterbalanced by an innate and timeless sense of stillness, calm and contemplation.

Graeme Todd was born in Glasgow in 1962 and studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. His work has been exhibited internationally since 1989 and he had his first solo museum exhibition, "Space is Deep" at the Kunsthaus Glarus, switzerland in 2002. Other solo exhibitions include the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2002), Gallery Side 2, Tokyo (2000), Gallery Brigitte Weiss, Zurich (2001) and Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, Rome (2002).

Forthcoming exhibitions:
Peter Lynch: 25 February - 29 March 2003
Louise Hopkins: 2 April - 3 May 2003

Image: a work by Graeme Todd

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David J. Batchelor
4 December 2002 - 18 January 2003
The Project Room @ Andrew Mummery Gallery

Drawing from contemporary lifestyle, interior design and architecture, Batchelor samples and manipulates images from magazines and life using an Apple Mac computer. He then paints the image on to MDF, and further references technology by literally cutting and pasting the work. The whole experience for Batchelor is often, what he calls a "freudian clashx{2026} I don't attempt to make a narrative, but it just happens. It verges on the chaos theory - making order out of the unordered."

To produce the work for this exhibition, Batchelor projected the computerised image onto the lower gallery walls. He has developed themes that have been central to his work of the last three years, where the relations of processed photographic material and domestic infrastructure collide. The space is smaller and lower than the main gallery and Batchelor has noted this when looking at the project space in it's own entity with it's spiral staircase feeding you in. The work has been made to deal with the physical experience of the gallery and has come out of his concern with being below street level, with reference to Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space. He believes there is something reminiscent of play, being smaller, under tables and chairs. He is interested in how we deal with space and our environment, but insists architecture is not a primary concern.

David J. Batchelor is the Senior Lecturer in painting on the foundation course at Chelsea College of Art and Design.

Andrew Mummery Gallery
63 Compton Street
London

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