PAINTING Sharon Hall and Fabian Peake Salford UK 2005
Painting, Sharon Hall, Fabian Peake
This exhibition brings together new paintings by Fabian Peake and Sharon Hall. The artists have both decided on certain methods for the exhibition, which allow them to investigate ongoing concerns over the particular 'display' of painting. This can be seen as a technique which is critical to the construction of the paintings themselves. As a technique it actualizes different method for interaction, where the autonomy of a single surface; the physical constraints that this brings to painting is shifted, subsequently enhancing the interconnectivity of the multiple panels. These different surfaces can be engaged, by the viewer, singularly but also across the constraints of the 'frame' or edge. Frame as a device, or shape, would usually construct the particulars of surface and, at the same time distinguishes the plane from anything 'outside'. In contrast the more 'theatrical' installation enhances the connections between the different surfaces. This method highlights difference and subjects each surface, not only to differences evident within its own surface but also differences created in the connections between the different surfaces.
Sharon Hall’s new paintings exemplify a particular approach to the installation of painting and the questioning of the relationship between individual surfaces. The individual surfaces present multiple contradictions between ground and mark, form and the formless, order and chaos...
It is not a self critical definition of painting but rather a mapping between different contradictory elements, emphasizing the dualistic approach, or a shadow play, which through the method of installation becomes more apparent. In essence the actual installation constructs an ‘in between’ where connections are made between and across the different paintings.
Alistair Payne
2005