Colin Lowe
The Turettes Shroud
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Vilma Gold is pleased
to present Colin Lowe’s first solo exhibition with the
gallery. The Turettes Shroud will comprise of new sculpture
and text based paintings.
The Turrettes Shroud sees Colin Lowe and his night-time companion
Niloc Ewol attempt to manifest and communicate the psychic babble
of the rubber room, the brain box of their wonderfully lunatic
personal state of mind. Sometimes the mind is a labyrinth and
blockages occur but quite often the pathology can be treated
with a couple of nurofen and a joke. What appears bleak and
traumatic to some can be flippant and easily digestible to others.
The slights and irrelevancies, the side steps and misunderstandings
that most people deal with everyday become the skiddy architecture
on which to build an edifice of fragile hope.
Letters From A Padded Brain Cell started from a one off request
for an unidentified medical interference into the insecurity
of one mans mis management of his own meagre resources, (randomly
picked from the Yellow Pages) but has now mushroomed into a
correspondence of 30 or more letters. In this series the unconscious
meandering and uncoupling of reason is examined and then repeated
from the viewpoint of an imaginary farmer who has lost not just
his land but maybe the plot as well. In some ways the letters
trace a similar path to the letters of Van Gogh to his brother
Theo, constantly calling into question the whole Universe (which
exists as a psychic trip hazard) and finding imaginary unsettling
signals everywhere, even in the SANELINE logo itself.
What appears to be a deranged Star Wars storm trooper crossed
with a tramps imaginary fancy dress party on a night of self-torture,
Pronounced D.O.A. treats self-goading to a game of tag with
bad language. Various ways of humiliating/crucifying yourself
are let out to produce an exo skeleton of pain with a head that
is decapitated from the host body and not quite in touch with
itself. The implication being that madness can find you at any
age and that this might be normal, a victim without a cure,
or the need for one. A black sheep of a sculpture it stands
wretched and forlorn but still standing in immovable concrete
boots that cut off the circulation (and ones inability to circulate)
beyond the confines of a nebulous self detriment.
Kamikaze Decisions, Text Message, The Lone Pair, Feminine Ending,
White Feather, The Mundane Plod, The Coward, all use blunt expressionism
to usher the viewer into a subject matter of banality and minor
turmoil, made explicit. These hand painted text poems plunder
the psyche of regret and sadness, like Robinson Crusoe trying
to find a way out of his isolation, only to retread his own
plodding steps and find frenzied comfort in his own familiarity.
While peering round delicate black sculptures, (that seem on
the verge of collapse, resting precariously on tiny shelves)
we engage with a mixture of profanities and the little burps
of trivia and irrelevance that can send us round the bend. Lowe
finds personal observation and disjointed memory pins the doubts
that dismantle healthy experiences and puncture the thin skin
of rational discernment, which act like mental dark implosions
and hurdles to well being.
'People capable of liking
some paintings or prints or whatever can rarely do so without
knowing something about the artist. Again, the situation is
social rather than scientific. Any work of art is half of a
conversation between two human beings, and it helps a lot to
know who is talking at you. Does he or she have a reputation
for seriousness, for religiosity, for suffering, for sexual
desire, for rebellion, for sincerity, for jokes?'
Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake.
For further information or images please contact Sarah McCrory:
+44(0) 20 8981 3344 or: sarah@vilmagold.com |
Show poster
Colin Lowe
Kamikaze Decisions, 2004
acrylic on paper on board, charcoal, card
122 x 82 x 15 cm
Colin Lowe
This is How I Live/Die, 2004
mixed media
185 x 60 x 60 cm
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