until Wednesday 5 August
In the last four months we have had more than the usual time to plan for this exhibition. Whilst we did not know when we would be able to re-open, we made the decision at the beginning that whatever journey we were about to go on we were going there with our artists and we needed to help each other. This show is a thank you to all of those artists who have made this last period a shared experience and we are delighted to bring this together as the first exhibition in our London Gallery.
Tuesday Riddell’s rich, symbolically charged lacquerware pieces take us into an ethereal nocturne of fantastical narratives and acute observation, highlighting themes of mortality and contemporary environmental concerns. It is perhaps then fitting that this new body of six paintings – originally scheduled to be shown as part of a focus on British Observational Art in New York this May – are being offered direct to our clients during this time, when both are in the forefront of our minds.
Tuesday’s intricate pieces recall sottobosco painting of the Dutch 17th Century as they magnify insect life and the of flora and fauna of the natural world. They also employ a visual language that links fairy tales and the fabulous with the real life underworld that is both harmonious and perilous, beautiful and decaying.
She is one of a number of artists supported and represented by Messums whose artistic practice is underpinned by extraordinary craftsmanship in the execution of their work. Similar to Asian lacquer work, Japanning is a European technique brought to Britain in the 17th Century that is both laborious and today is rarely studied. Tuesday’s synthesis of this traditional practice with a modern sensibility and awareness of nature points to a generation of artists who venerate the present, question the future and have embraced technical skill.
Tuesday Riddell’s work takes us down to the forest floor and a glorious insight into the world that captures her imagination, that ethereal nocturne when all cycles of life and death carry on with rarely a watchful eye. However it is also her unique craftsmanship in the ancient art of japanning that catches the eye. […]