DOMINIC MYATT

This exhibition focuses on new and recent works on canvas, and is rooted in the spontaneity and experimentation of Myatt’s layering of images and marks.

Working across a variety of scales, Myatt creates dynamic, deliberately unsettled compositions in which iconography and meaning jostle for position. Recognisable objects – lamps, horses, hands, cockerels, and chairs – are depicted in dark line drawings. They hover over (and within) gestural patches of colour – sometimes pastel-shaded varieties of white, yellow and blue, and sometimes more intense reds and greens.

Across his work in a range of media, including photography and sculpture, Myatt has riffed on the idea of animated cartoons. In these paintings the images of objects could be read as being drawn on clear celluloid sheets and placed over painted backgrounds. Redolent of childhood nostalgia and the sense of a space in which normal rules and consequences don’t apply, this analogy implies a sense of action resulting in narrative. Rather than a consistent protagonist or set of characters, however, Myatt’s canvases are like image frames each with their own internal logic. Full of playful humour, as well as flashes of abjection and feelings of unease or threat, the paintings invite the viewer into a game of looking and deciphering, encouraging an open-ended response.