FOUR

9th May until 1st June

Introduction

‘Four’ is an exhibition by artists Andy Harper, David Kemp, Jesse Leroy Smith and Rupert White each of whom are showing at Millennium for the first time. The exhibition has no formal theme. It is very much about showing the work as intended without adding an imposed curatorial dialogue, although there will be sympathy between the works on show.

Jesse Leroy Smith will be showing a suite of new oil paintings on mirror and metal panel, focusing on the discoveries of childhood. Vicariously viewed through the adult lens, one is reminded at times of Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’. We witness the wonderment of revelation as well as the ambivalence of youth. Our experience in doing so becomes a nostalgic pleasure, but also hints at innocence lost in the journey of development.

David Kemp is well known for his idiosyncratic sculptural works using the found and discarded detritus of our times. His ‘tribal’ masks made from ‘junk’ hint strongly at the decline of our own cultural legacy. Kemp works on the cliff edge at Botallack, West Penwith amongst the ruins of the mines. The landscape suggests a lost civilisation although in reality the ruins date back to the early 20th century. Both
the landscape and Kemp’s personal politics combine in the suggested archaeology of his work.

Andy Harper’s exquisite and perplexing works, mostly in oil on canvas, of rampaging flora hint at a world without human colonization, on the one hand apparently full of life, on the other the seemingly stifled and claustrophobic. A magical monumental post-apocalyptic landscape is suggested.

Rupert White will be showing new work in mixed media, including sculpture, drawing and animation. Referencing abstract modernist art traditions, including the St Ives legacy. His work looks at man’s relationship to nature and how this is affected by technology and notions of technological ‘progress’.


Joseph Clarke