2017 - CURRENTS - An Exhibition of Painting by three Emerging British Artists

Curators: Tamar Arnon & Eli Zagury
Artists: Caroline Walker, Nick Goss, Neil Raitt

'Currents' presents the work of three young London based painters: Nick Goss, Neil Raitt and Caroline Walker. These artists explore the challenges facing many contemporary painters working today, namely that young painters must create contemporary art that is current and fresh whilst using the traditional medium of painting. Todays emerging painters are often faced with negative attitudes towards painting from the contemporary art establishment, which constantly debates whether painting is out of fashion or figurative painting should be consigned to art history.

As curators we have always been drawn to painters, especially those who strive for technical excellence whilst grappling with new ideas. We have admired artists who are comfortable with being engaged in a public dialogue about painting.  Artists who are not just image-maker, but also demonstrate a keen interest and engagement with socio-political issues. For this show we chose to work with painters who question and investigate the very meaning and the power of the image in contemporary painting.

Occupying a place between reality and fiction, Caroline Walker's practice explores the relationship between her urban environment and female identity. For this show, Walker focused on specific locations in Los Angeles that provided her with the starting point for creating a set on which fictitious scenarios unfold. Southern California inspired Walker to produce a body of work reflecting her continued interest in the tense relationship between human identity, fiction and constructed urban environments.

Neil Raitt's paintings feature compositions of endlessly repeated cabins, mountains, ponds, evergreen trees and other natural motifs. He continually explores the idea of repetition itself, as a concept and as a form of abstraction. He uses the repetition to remove any sense his viewers might have of recognizing a particular location or a familiar object. Raitt's work attempts to re-define landscape painting and to re-examine it's figurative elements to create a new visual language. He makes gestures adopted from Bob Ross' popular 1980's instructional television program —The Joy of Painting

Near-abstract paintings that are elusive and at least in part, a work of fiction, are central to Nick Goss' practice in which he explores the paradox of observation and memory, urban dislocation and nostalgia. When working on his oeuvres, Goss is intensely interested in observing strangers around London suburbs and in exploring their cultural memories and identity, which he mixes with his own imagination and personal experiences.

Living in London affords us the privilege of being part of a vibrant and international art scene with some of the best art schools in the world. London is home to thousands of artists and studio-complexes where we have often had the pleasure of finding artists in the very early stages of their career. An exciting and fulfilling part of our job has been accompanying these emerging artists on their journey from young graduates into international exhibiting artists.

In this exhibition we aim to provide a platform for these three talented young artists, whom we have followed and supported since their college days, to present their work to an Asian audience and to examine their position in an international context.

—Tamar Arnon and Eli Zagury, "CURRENTS - Notes from the Curators"