Biography
| EDUCATION | ||
| 2004 - 2007 | Post-Graduate Diploma Fine Art | Royal Academy Schools, London |
| 2000 - 2003 | BA (Hons) Fine Art | Middlesex University, London |
| ONE PERSON EXHIBITIONS | ||
| 2023 | Correspondences | Galerie Isabelle Gounod, Paris |
| 2022 | Autumn Song | Gramercy Park Studios, London |
| 2021 | Collaborators | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2019 | Chronicles | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2018 | RUN TO ME (with Derek Ridgers | curated by Faye Dowling) | Galerie Heike Strelow, Frankfurt |
| 2017 | RUN TO ME (with Derek Ridgers | curated by Faye Dowling) | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2014 | Colossal Youth (Part 2) | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2014 | Colossal Youth (Part 1) | VOLTA, New York |
| 2011 | The Fearful Joy | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2009 | Vas Deferens | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2008 | The Cabinet | BRAUBACHfive, Frankfurt |
| 2008 | Boundaries | Thomas Williams Fine Art, London |
| SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS | ||
| 2023 | Rose Garden | Terrace Gallery, London |
| 2022 | An eXhibition of SMALL things with BIG ideas (curated by Paul Carey-Kent) White | Conduit Projects, London |
| 2022 | DELTA GAMMA (curated by Zavier Ellis) | Saatchi Gallery, London |
| 2021 | Repetition | The Depot x CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2020 | Picture Palace | Transition Gallery, London |
| 2020 | Words that transform, vibrate and glow: 13 paintings inspired by the lyrics of Nick Cave (curated by Angela Koulakoglou) | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2019 | 10 Years | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2019 | Plan B | David Zwirner Gallery, New York |
| 2018 | Total Eclipse of The Heart - Paintings about Women (curated by Dan Coombs) | Watson Farley & Williams, London |
| 2018 | Making and Breaking the Rules: Royal Academy 250 | Russel-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth |
| 2018 | Pleasure Drive (curated by GSL Projekt and CAVE 3000) | GSL Projekt, Berlin |
| 2017 | In Memoriam Francesca Lowe | Old Truman Brewery, London |
| 2017 | Part I: Street Semiotics (curated by Zavier Ellis) | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2016 | A Promise of Truth - the Contemporary Portrait | Galerie Robert Drees, Berlin |
| 2016 | Black Paintings | Galerie Heike Strelow, Frankfurt |
| 2016 | Semiotic Guerilla Warfare (Part 2) | Dean Clough Museum, Halifax |
| 2015 | Semiotic Guerilla Warfare (Part 1) | PAPER Gallery, Manchester |
| 2015 | Black Paintings | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2015 | Black Paintings : CHARLIE SMITH LONDON & Heike Strelow Gallery | Positions, Berlin |
| 2015 | REALITY: Modern and Contemporary British Painting | Walker Art Museum, Liverpool |
| 2015 | Die English Kommen! - New Painting from London (curated by Zavier Ellis) | Galerie Heike Strelow, Frankfurt |
| 2014 | Idolatry | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2014 | Saatchi’s New Sensations and THE FUTURE CAN WAIT (curated by Zavier Ellis, Simon Rumley & Rebecca | B1, Victoria House, London |
| 2014 | Cultus Deorum (curated by Zavier Ellis) | Saatchi Gallery, London |
| 2014 | REALITY: Modern and Contemporary British Painting (curated by Chris Stevens) | Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich |
| 2013 | Gallery Artists: Director’s Selection | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2013 | Saatchi Gallery & Channel 4’s New Sensations and THE FUTURE CAN WAIT (curated by Zavier Ellis, Simon Rumley & Rebecca Wilson) | B1, Victoria House, London |
| 2013 | Porträts | Galerie Rigassi, Bern |
| 2012 | The Id, the Ego and the Superego (curated by Zavier Ellis) | BRAUBACHfive, Frankfurt |
| 2012 | Saatchi Gallery & Channel 4’s New Sensations and THE FUTURE CAN WAIT (curated by Zavier Ellis, Simon Rumley & Rebecca Wilson) | B1, Victoria House, London |
| 2012 | The Serpent’s Tail | Witzenhausen Gallery, Amsterdam |
| 2012 | Polemically Small (curated by Zavier Ellis & Edward Lucie-Smith) | Orleans House Gallery, Twickenham |
| 2012 | The Id, the Ego and the Superego (curated by Zavier Ellis & Marcela Munteanu) | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2011 | Saatchi Gallery & Channel 4’s New Sensations and THE FUTURE CAN WAIT (curated by Zavier Ellis, Simon Rumley & Rebecca Wilson) | B1, Victoria House, London |
| 2011 | Charlie Sierra Lima | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2011 | Everyday (curated by Tony Benn) | University Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge |
| 2011 | Polemically Small (curated by Edward Lucie-Smith) | Klaipeda Culture Communication Centre, Klaipeda |
| 2011 | THE FUTURE CAN WAIT presents: Polemically Small (curated by Zavier Ellis, Edward Lucie-Smith & Simon Rumley) | Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles |
| 2011 | Polemically Small (curated by Edward Lucie-Smith) | Garboushian Gallery, Beverley Hills |
| 2010 | Pokerface | Koraalberg Contemporary Art Gallery, Antwerp |
| 2010 | THE FUTURE CAN WAIT (curated by Zavier Ellis & Simon Rumley) | Shoreditch Town Hall, London |
| 2010 | Polemically Small (curated by Edward Lucie-Smith) | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2010 | Ray Lowry London Calling | Idea Generation, London |
| 2010 | New British Painting (curated by Zavier Ellis & Pilvi Kalhama) | Gallery Kalhama & Piippo, Helsinki |
| 2010 | Call to Arms | BRAUBACHfive, Frankfurt |
| 2009 | British Art Now (curated by Edward Lucie-Smith) | Werkstatt Galerie, Berlin |
| 2009 | THE FUTURE CAN WAIT (curated by Zavier Ellis & Simon Rumley) | Old Truman Brewery, London |
| 2009 | New London School (curated by Zavier Ellis & Simon Rumley) | Galerie Schuster, Berlin |
| 2008 | THE FUTURE CAN WAIT (curated by Zavier Ellis & Simon Rumley) | Old Truman Brewery, London |
| 2008 | The Smallest Art Fair in the World | Anna Kustera Gallery, New York |
| 2008 | A Stain upon the Silence (curated by Chris Shilling, Chris Page & Gaboy Gaynor) | St. Martins College of Art, London |
| 2008 | Anticipation (curated by Kay Saatchi & Catriona Warren) | Selfridges, London |
| 2008 | UK Best Graduates | White Box Gallery, New York |
| 2008 | The Past is History Part II (curated by Zavier Ellis & Simon Rumley) | Changing Role Gallery, Napoli |
| 2008 | The Past is History Part I (curated by Zavier Ellis & Simon Rumley) | Changing Role Gallery, Rome |
| 2008 | Icon (curated by Hugh Mendes) | Primo Alonso Gallery, London |
| 2008 | New London School (curated by Zavier Ellis & Simon Rumley) | Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles |
| 2007 | THE FUTURE CAN WAIT (curated by Zavier Ellis & Simon Rumley) | Atlantis Gallery, London |
| 2006 | RA 5 | Lennon Weinberg, New York |
| 2006 | Royal Academy Show | Wisniez Castle, Krakow |
| 2005 | 50 Selected artists | Hollow Salon, London |
| 2004 | 12 Award Winners Show | Florence Trust, London |
| AWARDS & RESIDENCIES | ||
| 2007 | Chelsea Arts Club Travel Award | |
| 2005 | Sturdley Award | |
| 2004 | British Institute Award | |
| 2003–2004 | Florence Trust Studio Award | |
| BIBLIOGRAPHY | ||
| 2017 | RUN TO ME | Exhibition Catalogue |
| 2017 | The Book of Black, Faye Dowling (ISBN 978-1786270429) | Laurence King Publishing |
| 2014 | REALITY: Modern and Contemporary British Painting, Chris Stevens (ISBN 978-1786270429) | Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts |
| 2013 | 100 London Artists Vol. 1, Zavier Ellis & Edward Lucie-Smith | iArtBook |
| 2013 | Saatchi Gallery & Channel 4’s New Sensations and THE FUTURE CAN WAIT | Exhibition Catalogue |
| 2012 | Saatchi Gallery & Channel 4’s New Sensations and THE FUTURE CAN WAIT | Exhibition Catalogue |
| 2011 | Saatchi Gallery & Channel 4’s New Sensations and THE FUTURE CAN WAIT | Exhibition Catalogue |
| 2010 | New British Painting, Timo Valjakka | Artforum |
| 2009 | British Art Now, Travis Jeppesen | Artforum |
| 2009 | Sexuality in Art | Modern Edition.com |
| 2008 | THE FUTURE CAN WAIT | Exhibition Catalogue |
| 2008 (Jul) | Saatchi after Saatchi, Ginny Dougray | The Times Magazine |
| 2007 (Oct) | Oh You Pretty Things, Derwent May | The Times |
| 2007 (Aug) | Guide to the Fairs, Richard Clayton | Sunday Times |
| 2007 | 15 Young Masters, Freire Barnes | Bon International (No.12) |
| 2007 | Miser & Now (Issue 10), Q&A | Miser & Now |
| COLLECTIONS | ||
| Javier Baz, Denver | ||
| Carlos Fragoso, New York | ||
| Glen Luchford, New York | ||
| David Roberts, London | ||
| Sir Norman Rosenthal, London | ||
| Kay Saatchi, Los Angeles | ||
| Private collections in Belgium, Columbia, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom & United States | ||
Press Release | 10 Years | 2019
| 10 Years |
| Dale Adcock, Emma Bennett, Kiera Bennett, Sara Berman, Jelena Bulajić, Tom Butler, Paul Chiappe, Adam Dix, Susannah Douglas, Tessa Farmer, Tom Gallant, Florian Heinke, Sam Jackson, Simon Keenleyside, Thomas Langley, Wendy Mayer, Hugh Mendes, Sean Molloy, Alex Gene Morrison, Tamsin Morse, Gavin Nolan, Dominic Shepherd, Carolein Smit, Barry Thompson, Gavin Tremlett |
| PRIVATE VIEW: Thursday 11 July 6.30-8.30pm |
| EXHIBITION DATES: Friday 12 July – Saturday 10 August 2019 |
| GALLERY HOURS: Wednesday-Saturday 11am-6pm or by appointment |
| CHARLIE SMITH LONDON is delighted to announce ’10 Years’, our anniversary exhibition produced to celebrate a full decade’s operations in Shoreditch. During this time we have presented 88 exhibitions within the gallery, defining CHARLIE SMITH LONDON and gallery director Zavier Ellis’ unique curatorial vision. The gallery has also established itself as a discovery zone by being the first to exhibit many acclaimed young artists via its annual graduate exhibition Young Gods. Beyond the gallery walls, the gallery has participated in over 30 art fairs in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, UK and USA. Zavier Ellis also launched the monumental annual exhibition THE FUTURE CAN WAIT with Simon Rumley, a ten-year project that was presented in partnership with Saatchi’s New Sensations for four years and culminated in helping organise the seminal fund-raising exhibition In Memoriam Francesca Lowe. Ellis has also curated or co-curated gallery, museum and pop up exhibitions in Berlin, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Klaipėda, London, Los Angeles, Naples and Rome. And, perhaps most notably, the gallery has placed millions of pounds worth of artwork into collections globally, working with many of the most prominent international collectors, and enabling artists to continue to do what artists do best: making work. This exhibition consists of some (but by no means all) of Ellis’ favourite artists who have shown over the years at CHARLIE SMITH LONDON; some whom he has been tracking and wanting to show; and gallery artists. We hope you can join us on July 11th to help us celebrate 10 Years! Please contact gallery for images and further information. |
Press Release | 2017
| SAM JACKSON & DEREK RIDGERS | RUN TO ME |
| Exhibition Dates: Friday 13 October – Saturday 11 November 2017 |
| RUN TO ME brings together the work of painter Sam Jackson and photographer Derek Ridgers. Curated by Faye Dowling, the exhibition celebrates the sacred ceremonies of excess, desire and experimentation which intoxicate our youth. British artists Ridgers and Jackson are united by an instinct to document the characters and compulsions that have driven the heart of our youth culture. Their photographs and paintings lead us into the nocturnal romances of passion and performance which ignite our passage of youth. The ceremonies of dressing up and dancing, the seduction of exposed flesh and of kissing in dark doorways. The melancholy and mischief, the ecstasy and heart break. Over four decades Derek Ridgers has been photographing the beautiful and the damned in his ongoing portrayal of youth culture and identity. Photographed in iconic clubs such as Blitz, Billy’s and Skin II, his portraits capture the subterranean club-life of the 1980s and 90s, conveying a dark carnival of music and fashion, love and lust. Caught in the flashlights, we see ourselves reflected in the faces of his photographs; and witness the tensions between power and vulnerability, questioning who is in control - the observer or observed? Sam Jackson’s compulsive oil paintings explore themes of transgression and power in intimate portraits of youth culture and desire. Jackson’s text appears propelled to new, heightened voices. Symbols and statements speak of inner dialogues and desires, driving us to question the tensions between our public and private identities; and to navigate truths about intimacy, fantasy, and will. With gravity and compassion, Jackson’s paintings walk the line between violence and vulnerability, regret and desire, kissing and fucking. Both provocative and touching, their intimate portrayals embrace the questions and compulsions that unite us. Disarmed by our desire to explore who we are, and who we can be. Transcending generations, time and place, through their work we discover that these compulsions, these transgressions, lie at the heart of what makes us human. A sacred passage through which we can engage with the Gods and ghosts within ourselves. Illuminated in the spotlight, for a moment, forever. RUN TO ME is curated by Faye Dowling, UK, in association with CHARLIE SMITH LONDON and GALERIE HEIKE STRELOW, Frankfurt. The exhibition opens a two-part show which will tour to Frankfurt in 2018. The exhibition will be accompanied by a limited edition catalogue featuring a further exploration of Ridgers’ and Jackson’s work, and a conversation with the artists recorded in London, 2017. Please contact gallery for PR images and advance copies of the RUN TO ME catalogue. |
Press Release | 2014
| SAM JACKSON | Colossal Youth (Part 2) |
| Exhibition Dates : Friday March 28th – Saturday May 3rd 2014 |
| CHARLIE SMITH LONDON is delighted to present Sam Jackson with his third one person exhibition at the gallery. ‘Colossal Youth (Part 2)’ represents the second phase of a body of work that takes as its starting point the topography of youth sub-culture, with the first phase being Jackson’s recent solo presentation at Volta New York. Influenced by both contemporary and historical high and low culture, Jackson draws here on the iconic photography of Derek Ridgers. Documenting street and club culture in the 1970’s and 80’s, Ridgers surveyed the vanguard of punk, skinheads and new romantics. The raw urgency and do-it-yourself attitudes embedded within these movements are mirrored in Jackson’s instinctively guttural paintings, where his portraits and figures are hewn with text that recalls rough, homemade tattoos and graffiti. The text represents a cognitive statement and a definitive point of reference while the subjects themselves project a sense of contemplative melancholy. Jackson’s sexual paintings range from mildly erotic to graphically pornographic. They refer to the overt sexualisation of the postmodern era that manifested itself stylistically in the 1970’s in punk and fetish, since when such underground tropes have inevitably come to occupy mainstream culture, encouraged by evermore open media coverage; absorption into high street fashion; de-marginalisation of sexual minorities; and increasing prevalence of internet pornography. This evermore conspicuous sexuality is absorbed by Jackson and filtered from image to painterly surface, undergoing a shift where the transgressive is interwoven with a unique delicacy. The subjects in Jackson’s paintings, therefore, derive from various sources, reflecting current tendencies in an image obsessed society in the internet age, where traditional notions of private and public access have been transformed. Images from Polaroids, magazines, video clips and the internet are used to explore the worlds of DIY tattoos, addiction, homemade and amateur pornography, fantasy, excess, youth culture, violence, Baroque and Renaissance painting, failure, literature and music. |
Press Release | 2011
| SAM JACKSON | The Fearful Joy |
| Exhibition Dates : Friday March 4th - Saturday April 2nd 2011 |
| CHARLIE SMITH LONDON is delighted to present Sam Jackson with his second solo show at the gallery following his 2009 sell out debut. In this exhibition Jackson has restricted his studio practice in order to concentrate only on portraiture. Returning to a smaller format than his recent larger works there is an economy in scale as well as paint application that demands quiet consideration. Calling to mind the economical approach of Luc Tuymans or Wilhelm Sasnal, these new paintings are subtle, contemplative and calmly beguiling. Beginning with source material derived from the canon of art history; historical figures of consequence or obscurity; political figures; and others that might be found variously in books, periodicals or newspapers, Jackson chooses and then engenders in his subjects a distinct melancholy and authenticity. It is important that these subjects, almost wholly male, have been chosen as a starting point and not as specific references, but nonetheless they are imbued with a gravitas that alludes to the presence of the weight of history. Technically we find in these paintings a fluidity of paint. Just as the subjects are rendered atmospheric rather than specific, so the paint work provides expression and feeling. The idea of a life lived and spent is felt and liquid application and mark making represent an understanding of the conveyance of character via the entropic. As well as this, poise and palette also point to the worn and weary; to experience and the effects of time. Combined with characteristic use of unsteady line we are presented with psychological, charged paintings that at times turn us back on ourselves. Seen together as a body of work one occasionally has the sense of being observed by a group of forefathers in a similar way to that induced by Gerhard Richter’s ’48 Portraits’. A sense of character, culture and history bring weight to the subjects who invite and then question the observer. Perhaps, though, these paintings are more about the artist than his audience. In attempting to ‘punctuate a boredom of society’ Jackson is resorting to history and to his own interior world. There is a yearning for the past that is perhaps less about the romantic notion of a more idyllic age and more about the dissatisfaction of today. We cannot locate the time and place which these characters inhabit but we do know that it is not here and now. Due to a discontentment with our nihilistic age Jackson aligns himself to heroic but unidentified figures of the past and of his own imagination, revealing as well as this disavowal a want of perceived acquaintance over actual isolation. |
Press Release | 2009
| SAM JACKSON | Vas Deferens |
| Exhibition Dates : Friday December 11th 2009 – Saturday January 23rd 2010 |
| “In my view, one of the likely agents of change is an artist called Sam Jackson. What does he do? He paints. Worse still, he often paints very small. I can’t think of a more revolutionary combination in London right now.” Edward Lucie-Smith Jackson’s predominantly small to miniature paintings operate between several axes of investigation. Whilst recalling Old Master works in tone and atmosphere, they embody the contemporary by way of transgressive subject matter and stark, psychological intensity. Form and line vie and give way to disrupt and obfuscate the image as we are led beyond surface to a place of instinctive violence, impulsive sexuality and unsteady psychological bearing. By continuing to make paintings that can still violate our sensibilities even in a time of unrepentant exposure to violent and sexual imagery, Jackson embraces tension and taboo, and simultaneously forces and seduces his audience to assimilate the erotic, pornographic and at times abject. These visceral, excessive works are, however, offset by moments of quietude defined by contemplative still lifes and portraits that oscillate between the reverential and the neurotic. Jackson’s studio practice is unrelenting, analogous to a form of free association where found images, mental images and memories combine to create manifest and latent content in the works themselves. At once obsessive, fetishist and beautiful, the paintings reveal both destructive and life affirming drives whilst becoming sublimating mechanisms for both artist and audience. Sam Jackson graduated in 2007 from the Royal Academy Schools in London and achieved instant recognition by going into the collections of Sir Norman Rosenthal, Kay Saatchi and David Roberts. Since then he has gone on to exhibit in Berlin, Frankfurt, Krakow, Los Angeles, Napoli, New York and Rome; and most recently has been curated into ‘British Art Now’ by Edward Lucie-Smith. |
Text | Sam Jackson & Derek Ridgers in Conversation | 2017
| Sam Jackson & Derek Ridgers X Faye Dowling | The Reliance | 2017 |
| Exhibition: RUN TO ME |
| Derek: I went to a school in West London where some of the kids were Mods and had scooters. Even wearing school uniforms they looked a little sharper and a little more cool than everybody else. But the conversation wasn’t really about clothes or scooters, so much as about going around fighting. When I was sixteen I started to go out on my own to clubs and see bands. The very first time I went to see a group was at the Ricky Tick in 1966. You would always see a lot of the early skinheads, or peanuts, as they were known in those days, larking about, posing and showing off. By the time the punks came along I definitely felt like I wasn’t young enough to be one. I had two children by that point and I just don’t think I really had the balls to perform like that and not care about life. Eventually I learnt to not care about the consequences of what you did, but that was in my forties. It suddenly dawned on me, the beauty of not worrying about consequences! Faye: Can you remember when you first started taking your camera to gigs? Derek: In 1973 I was at a gig at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park with my girlfriend, now wife. It was the famous gig with Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend. We were right at the back and I thought I could go down to the front and pretend to be a photographer. Which is what I did. I left my girlfriend, very unchivalrously, and went down to the front for the whole gig, just snapping away. To be a few feet away from someone you idolise gives you a real charge. When I was in my twenties I was an art director and although I was shy, it definitely gave me a hutzpah. I used to ring people up, I didn’t care who they were, including rock stars, you know, just give them a ring. Nowadays you’d never dream of doing that would you?! When punk came along in 1976, the audience were far more photogenic than the band. So I decided to turn around and photograph the audience. I took a set of pictures, maybe thirty or forty, that I thought weren’t bad. I showed them to Sarah Kent at the ICA, and to Jack Schofield, the editor of a magazine called Photo Technique. They were both very nice about them, so from that point on, I thought, yeah maybe I can be a photographer. Sam: Were you already shooting for magazines at this time? Derek: 1979 was probably the year I started taking my pictures to magazines. I took them into The Face almost as soon as it started in the spring of 1980. The Face was just one man at that point, Nick Logan, and his wife helping him out. Nick published some of my photos from Blitz in the November issue that year. I also had a monthly commission from Cosmopolitan around that time. I would go out looking for interesting bands to photograph and they would put them in the magazine. I was always keen to do that because I loved the music anyway. Faye: What was the atmosphere like in those early days of Blitz? Derek: That was where it all started, Blitz and Billy’s. People going out as posers and peacocks. Blitz was really a wine bar that was full of people who wanted to pose. It was a small little affair, very subterranean. Faye: You often talk about yourself as an outsider during these times? Derek: At that point I definitely felt like an outsider. Literally standing on the pavement sometimes. But I am quite persistent if I want something. I’ve been like that ever since I was young. Some might say stubborn, but I like to think of it as persistent. There’s a photo of me in the Roxy when it started. I’m wearing a woolly cardigan, and a short-sleeved open neck shirt, I’d come straight from work, probably. I did rather stand out. I didn’t mind that then, and I still don’t mind it now. I always was very focussed on taking photographs. I never used to chat. I didn’t particularly want to stand about talking to people, or drinking, I was always thinking about photography. The big motivating factor for me was ultimately seeing interesting looking people on the street – sexy girls and tough looking guys. And wishing I was either like them, or with them, you know, one or the other. I’m heterosexual, so I’d have liked to have been with the girls, but if I’d had been one notch to the left, I could have gone the other way. I just wanted to get engaged in something that was going on, and to hold up a window to that world. Faye: Sam, you would have been growing up in London around this time. What were your early memories of the subcultures of this era? Sam: I used to see skinheads on the council estate that we were living on, out in the field on the green. I was very much attracted to them, but also quite fearful of their personas. I was also fascinated by what they had on – their boots, hairstyles, rings, jackets. They seemed very unapproachable. Kind of out of society. They behaved differently to how I’d ever seen men behave. And I think that had quite a profound influence on me. I think it started me thinking about aspects of masculinity and femininity, and notions of vulnerability around these. We used to go out to clubs in the Romford area, and there would be quite an undercurrent of violence. I was regularly beaten up. It was a harsh environment. If you were caught out you would get bottled or something. It seemed very bereft of a culture. Faye: So as you got older, which London scenes did you feel most connected to? Sam: I was a generation before the real rave scene and the rise of ecstasy. We would sit in our bedrooms listening to pirate radio stations. As we got older we started going out on the Camden scene to places like The Monarch or The Wag Club. Then suddenly it was the explosion of Brit Pop, and you felt that there was really a movement happening. Visually by then I was totally obsessed with music, and what the men wore. I would pore over books. I was really into the 60s, Jim Morrison, Keith Richards, Brian Jones. And also punk like Richard Hell, Iggy Pop. With punk there was a kind of understanding that potentially you could do anything. I found that really appealing. That there are no limitations, and you should be free to express yourself. Faye: Was this already starting to influence the art you were making? Sam: When I started engaging with education I wanted to translate these ideas into a painting idiom. I was interested in combining this punk DIY ethic with traditional oil painting, and exploring the use of text and symbols. That was around the time that I’d first come across Derek’s skinhead photographs. It’s difficult to put it into words, but its just like when you pick up a book or listen to a piece of music. I just connected to them; his work operated on a lot of different levels, not just the surface but also complex ideas about culture and identity as well. Faye: Your work consistently has a dual aspect of youth portraits alongside more dynamic, active pornographic paintings. Can you tell us a little about these? Sam: I was interested to highlight aspects of living that are perhaps more underground. I knew of the canon of art history in terms of pornography, artists such as Mapplethorpe and John Currin, and I was quite interested in looking at what I could do with it. Towards the end of my time at the Royal Academy I’d had a tutorial with Tom Lubbock and he’d said, ‘If you want to do this, Sam, just do it’. So I did, and they had a real sense of anxiousness to them. A lot of the inspiration for these paintings came from reading Marquis De Sade’s ‘The 120 Days of Sodom’ (1785). I was interested in his language and how I could generate a similar kind of dialogue to do with ideas of freedom and transgression in painting. Faye: These notions of transgression were at the heart of 80s clubs such as Skin Two and later the Torture Garden. Derek, what do you remember about those early days of the London fetish scene? Derek: I went to Skin Two on the night it opened. There definitely was a completely different atmosphere to the fetish clubs in those days. It really was an illicit underground scene. I think that’s what made it fun for a lot of people; it was a little transgressive. Whereas now it’s just a fashion thing; fetish clubs are full of tourists and are basically dance clubs with a lot of vinyl. Faye: Were clubs like Skin Two just about sex? Derek: I think they were really about the clothes, first of all, they were quite a lot about sex, and a little bit about music. Faye: We have talked about the idea of being an observer, or a voyeur in these quite intimate communities. What was your experience of photographing there? Derek: I got threatened a few times in the early days of Skin Two. They let me in because they knew me, but the punters didn’t like me being there with a camera. It was the old school fetish crowd, very few young people. They didn’t want to be revealed as fetishists. Some people don’t care if their neighbours know that they are into rubber, but then obviously some do. Sam: I think fetishists need an audience or dialogue for it to operate. And that audience has a lot to do with boundaries. J.G. Ballard wrote a fantastic piece on pornography being one of the last bastions in which this kind of space can still exist. I think there is a lot wrapped up in our fascination with that world. Maybe there’s an honesty, through which we can gain knowledge of ourselves. Faye: It seems perspective is very important when looking at subjects like this. Do you see the characters you paint as dominant or powerful? These girls are saying ‘Fuck with me’, but they seem to me like they’re very strong. Sam: Generally my portraits which deal with aspects of violence have always placed women within a dominant spectrum. A lot of women have bought these works, which is an interesting dichotomy. Gender is in some ways beyond my interests, its the entire gambit of humanness that interests me. I still see my work as some kind of documentation, even though it is oil painting in a fine art context. It’s strange how the subjects are diffused through the language of paint. It changes them drastically. I don’t know if it becomes more difficult or less difficult. Faye: So the works are about documenting something that is transgressive, but making it beautiful? Sam: Yes, definitely. These people really enjoy taking part in pornography, so in some ways it is a celebration of that. People have said to me, ‘Do you condone this?’, ‘Are you interested in it?’. But I never leave my perspective clear cut for the viewer. Am I being voyeuristic in making them, or am I also part of that world? I’d always want to keep that open. Faye: We’ve talked about the idea of voyeurism being an interesting aspect in both your work. Derek, your relationship with the viewer is interesting too? Derek: Mostly what I’m saying with my photographs is, in inverted commas, ‘Wow, look at this person’. I like people that are prepared to project a little bit to make an interesting photograph. That’s not always the beautiful people. It’s people that have a certain attitude. The people that want to be seen. A couple of times I’ve called people and said - ‘Look, I photographed you the other day, you took your trousers off and let me photograph your bum. Were you drunk?’ But usually they’ve said that it’s fine, that they want to be seen. After a few months at these clubs people knew what I was after. I never used to have to direct anybody. I didn’t think it was particularly legitimate to tell people what to do, if they didn’t do anything that was fine, that’s what I photographed. Faye: So they were in control of their photograph to some extent? Derek: I like them to be in control. I think that is maybe part of what Sam is talking about. I suppose it’s the reticent Englishman coming out. Sam: Yes in a way they become the more dominant in the creation of the image. Derek: But voyeurism is definitely part of the whole thing. Even when I’m photographing people in the street, of either gender, there’s an element of voyeurism in there. As a photographer I am looking through a window at different lives. Lives more exciting than mine. Ever since I started I’ve been a father and in a permanent relationship. So there’s always been a few doors that have been closed to me, and I’m kind of just taking a peek through those doors. Sam: It’s interesting what Derek is picking up on in terms of an interest in what it is to be human. What it is to be alive. I think that’s where my interest in portraiture stems from, as a means through which we can explore human emotions and identity. Faye: It brings to mind your portrait of Tuniol Barry, Derek, who has the face tattoo of the Sex Pistols lyric, ‘We are the flowers in your dustbin’. Derek: I first photographed Tuniol before he was tattooed, when he was just a skinhead. This would have been in 79 or 80. There was a scratcher around and he was doing it to a lot of kids. These kids didn’t have all that much to look forward to, you know. They weren’t going to get a job in a bank. Although I suppose it’s conceivable young people with tattooed faces could get a job in a bank nowadays. So they were feeling rejected by society, and in turn they were rejecting back. It was a one way street. They couldn’t come back from that. Faye: It’s a very interesting aspect of subculture, the idea of feeling like you are not accepted by society, so deciding to separate yourself from that society. Derek: It’s almost like saying, ‘Fuck you, I don’t want you anyway’. It’s embracing something that’s not all that far away from what you are looking at, Sam. A lot of people involved in porn, in my opinion, are ashamed of what they do, but it’s that very shame that gives them excitement. They want to embrace it. I think there must be a lot of fetishists that are like that too. They get a tingle of excitement by doing something that they know isn’t really right. Or not right in their terms. I mean, their mum and dad might not approve. Faye: Do you think social media has changed the way club scenes, and subcultures in general, can develop? Derek: It definitely has. Because people don’t have to leave their home to interact these days. This can be good in many respects, but it is bad in some respects; that no matter how transgressive you want to get you’ll always find someone, somewhere in the world that will give you justification for your views. But it can also be really positive for people. Nowadays, there are young Mods that might not live within a hundred miles of another Mod, but they can still interact with each other and say, ‘You look fantastic. Well done’. Whereas the people that live next to them are thinking, ‘You idiot. What are you doing?’ I know a young girl like that in a rural part of Northern Ireland. She gets spat on at school because she’s the only girl in the school with short hair. It’s terrible. Faye: So there is still something to fight against? Derek: Certainly. But she believes in herself. She’s getting plenty of likes on Instagram. I think that helps her feel good about herself, and why shouldn’t she. She’s extremely sharp. She could easily be a model or a stylist. Faye: So what’s shifted today is that perhaps its more autobiographical. People telling their own stories. Do you think it is more narcissistic now than in the 80s or 90s? Derek: It most probably is more narcissistic now, because people know that they will always have an audience, whereas they didn’t once. When I started, I used to photograph people who had probably never been photographed before. They might never even see their photograph either. Nowadays everyone can take photographs of themselves. And I’m not negative about that, I think it’s a great part of our youth culture. Faye: Do you still find people in clubs inspiring today? Derek: There are still some very very interesting looking, very engaged creative people out there. It’s just not quite so focussed as it was in the late60s, 70s and early-80s. There are still some fantastic-looking people on the scene, but because they’re not all necessarily going to the same few half a dozen clubs, people don’t think the creativity still exists. If I go to a really good club, even now at my age, I want to go again the next night and the next night, and do the same thing. I think that it is just as good as it ever was. |
Text | Paul Gorman | 2017
| Exhibition: RUN TO ME |
| Exhibition dates: 13th October - 17th November 2017 |
| The term ‘subculture’ has been, more often than not in these atomized, post-globalised times, routinely co-opted by big business in the lexicon of brand-awareness as a handy catch-all for those elements of youth and visual culture which contain a certain degree of edginess and that most sought-after of commodities, authenticity. In many instances, the visual relics of the turf wars so ferociously fought between Teds and Modernists, Mods and Rockers, Hippies and Skinheads, Punks and Teds (again), fetishists and society at large now provide the context for the mere selling of things, particularly in the world of fashion. But this casual adoption disavows the potency of lives lived in the margins, where visual expression achieves such significance that it becomes both the means and the end. In RUN TO ME, photographer Derek Ridgers and painter Sam Jackson reclaim the subject from commerce as the basis for a quizzical visual dialogue which turns on what the sociologist Dick Hebdige delineated, in his groundbreaking book, ‘Subculture: The Meaning Of Style’ [1]. Ridgers and Jackson arrive at RUN TO ME from different places temporally and in terms of practice, but share common ground in their interests in identity, observation and interpretation. It’s worth noting that Ridgers, having started his career by taking photographs of performers in the mid-70s, opted to turn his back on the stage and focus his lens on the audience, certain members of which in the wake of glam had begun to step out of the crowd to attempt to achieve a status on a par with their objects of worship. While the traditional rock press was lambasting dressedup Roxy Music concert-goers for “turning the aisles and foyer into a veritable couture catwalk show…more like the waiting-room for an Andy Warhol audition than the warm-up for a rock show” [2], Ridgers understood WH Auden’s line about the wisdom to be found in private faces in public places. As the documentarians Fred and Judy Vermorel recorded in their early-80s compilation of fan-mail ‘Starlust’ [3], these were ordinary human beings “capable of passion, imagination and creativity” to rival the Ferrys, Jaggers, Bowies and Bolans. The late cultural iconoclast Malcolm McLaren once mentioned to me that, in the wake of the Sex Pistols, consumers of popular culture became increasingly interested in the process, a crucial element of which, along with managers, a&r staff, mentors and fashion designers, are of course, the fans. Without them, the rest is silence. Not for nothing did he entitle his hip-hopera LP ‘Fans’. In fact, the installation of Sid Vicious on bass in the Pistols’ line-up removed him from the ranks of the hardcore fan-base of the Bromley Contingent and placed the late John Beverley, tragically as it turned out, centre stage as our first Superstar Fan. The club culture which superceded punk maintained the momentum; George O’Dowd, the so-called ‘hat-check girl’ at Blitz (when he wasn’t going through the pockets of the garments left in his care), was to become Boy George, one of the greatest musical stars of the age, while groups from Sade and Haysi Fantayzee, to Blue Rondo a la Turk and Spandau Ballet were literally created on the dance-floors of Soho and Covent Garden, where Ridgers was meticulously casting his mordant gaze. For those that don’t know, Derek Ridgers’ photographic catalogue is the gold standard in terms of documenting not just fans but the twists and turns of the key subcultures which have pertained in Britain over the last five decades, and in particular between the 1970s and 1990s. Having contributed portraits to the groundbreaking exhibition of punk photography at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1978, it was Ridgers who filed the photo-reportage from the front-lines of club culture as New Romantic emerged out of London’s squats and art schools in the early-1980s. His vérité depictions of denizens such as O’Dowd, Peter Robinson, who had already transformed himself into pop-star-in-waiting ‘Marilyn’, the club-runner and Visage frontman Steve Strange and young writer on the scene Robert Elms, essayed the perfect backdrop for the latter’s examination in an early issue of Nick Logan’s magazine The Face of what was then termed ‘The Cult With No Name’ [4]. And Ridgers was on hand a couple of years later capturing urban UK’s nightlife creatures as optimism curdled under the weight of the repressive attitude of Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government for Elms’ bookend piece in The Face, ‘Hard Times’. This investigated the impact on youth culture of not just the crippling unemployment figures and hard-biting recession in the wake of the Falklands War, but also the flooding of the UK’s urban centres with cheap heroin, and marked the turning away from the romanticism of taffeta, silks and pussy-bows to weathered leather, distressed denim and ripped and torn t-shirts. In his companion essay [5], Elms wrote: “Bear with me for a while, this first bit may be hard but it is important. Read it twice if you have to, because there is something you are going to have to grasp before we can go any further. And that is the notion that Youth Culture now representsnot a rebellion but a tradition, or rather a series of traditions that continue to grow along a compound continuum of action and reaction.” It is in this continuum that we locate Sam Jackson, growing up in 80s Essex where he encountered the skins and casuals who powered street-style before experiencing the glory days of pirate radio, the onset of acid-house and the growth of rave, which then gave way to the egalitarian spirit and inclusiveness of early Britpop in the 90s. There are many parallels between painter and photographer. Both received formal art school training (Ridgers at Ealing in the late-60s, Jackson at Middlesex and the Royal Academy in the 00s) and both are not only interested in the oppositional elements of subcultures, but also in investigating tensions between male and female archetypes. Jackson has developed a visual language which incorporates into his work text and symbols akin to the tattoo bravura displayed by some of Ridgers’ subjects; one thinks of the portraits of ‘Tuinol’ Barry, the doe-eyed youngster with the Sex Pistols lyric “We are the flowers in your dustbin” etched across his, by turns, cropped and bequiffed forehead. Like Ridgers since he entered David Claridge’s groundbreaking Soho fetish nightclub Skin Two in 1983, Jackson has also explored gender, pornography and sexual transgression. But it is in their dual sifting through subcultures for the meaning of much more than style that the strength of RUN TO ME lies. The interplay between Ridger’s era-defining images and Jackson’s plangent responses enables the flowers to flourish in the dustbin once more. Paul Gorman is the author of ‘The Story Of The Face: The Magazine That Changed Culture’, (Thames & Hudson, 2017) and ‘Malcolm McLaren: The Biography’, (Constable, 2018). 1. ‘Subculture: The Meaning Of Style’, Dick Hebdige, Routledge Classics, 1979. 2. ‘Chic To Chic, Roy Carr’, New Musical Express,October 14, 1974. 3. ‘Starlust: The Secret Life Of Fans’, Fred & Judy Vermorel, Comet, 1985. 4. The Face, Vol 1, No 7, November, 1980. 5. The Face, Vol 1, No 29, September, 1982 |
Text | Tony Benn | 2011
| TONY BENN | A daydream of everyday life |
| Exhibition: The Fearful Joy |
| Exhibition Dates: Friday March 4th 2011 - Saturday April 2nd 2011 |
| When Gautier exhorted artists of Paris to paint from life to make paintings of people in their ordinary clothes in the 19th century little did he know what he had done and undone. Manet attempted to enter his Tuilieries painting to the Academy salon; it was roundly rejected by Delacroix amongst others for its slap dash approach and the painting of people most of whom were unrecognisable or unremarkable. The recognition factor of Jackson’s paintings, a quality that is important to the portrait genre, is always held at some reserve. The figures of men are memorable or at least access those parts of our cultural memory we feel familiar with, but perhaps do not know why; the style and dress of the people painted seems to come from a long time ago without appearing completely historic. They pose and face towards us but rarely look at us. Their eyes always seem lost in some internal reverie, making them never quite available to us for scrutiny and enquiry. Jackson paints with a limpid oily quality to his work. The brush strokes are there and apparent, but don’t impose themselves against the depiction of likeness, nor do they emphasise forming and shaping in any demonstrative way. The use of paint is tactful without always being polite. I refer to Sam Jackson’s perhaps more earlier, perhaps more notorious work of pornographic scenes such as ‘Heel’ or ‘The Journey’ where the characters are performing some deep personal ritual that is not all about simple pleasures given and received. In the new works exhibited at CHARLIE SMITH london the characters that perform for Jackson’s painting are no less lost to some deep personal wonderment and dream state. They might be the same ones as the ones in sexual dramas; before they removed their clothes or after, and entered into their personal rituals of pain and pleasure. These people might be about to embark on their journeys of self-discovery, where the body will discover its own limits outside of the constrictions and reifications of bourgeois productivity. Tactfulness is often exhibited between those whose demands upon the world are extraordinary; in a more noble soul it is the quality of one who acts with a certain sense of propriety of doing the right thing at the right time. It can also mean a sense of touch - it has a quality of decisiveness to it. Tact requires a certain touch that is in the end the tacit, the precise manner of touching upon people and difficult subjects. The paintings demonstrate in front of us this certain touch. Just here and here but not so much there. There is no overload of gesture with paint, no over emphasising or stressing where the figure will be touched and described in paint. One is reminded of the tact that occurs frequently in Cezanne, especially in the card players, where the peasants are stated clearly seated at the table but where proximity is the issue: this near, but only this close, no closer. Closeness to surfaces is of high importance here in these new paintings; in fact the surfaces of flesh are animated, but not all over; only in certain places. The brush is used to activate the skin in much the same way a sadist might animate the skin of the willing submissive with a feather or a riding crop: your flesh will be touched there and there, but not everywhere. It could be said that painting is the art of tacit knowledge; that painting ‘is its own argument’, as T.J. Clark has said in ‘In Sight of Death’. Perhaps it is also true that painting keeps its distance from us, that it imposes or describes a distance which is not just a literal distance of the painting in this space from my body. The act of painting whether representational or otherwise is an abstraction upon a primary experience of distance. Merleau-Ponty would describe this as a spontaneous experience that precedes language and yet emerges through and within language. ‘The world is flesh’ (M-P) or when looking at painting is about the world becoming flesh. Painting implies depth whether described or denied, it is proffered forth to the viewer, and implies the viewers will accept the painting in their own space. The figures in Jackson’s paintings seem lost to their own world and lost to our world too. They are at a distance, a certain distance, a distance from themselves and most definitely at a distance from us. They exist silently within their brown rooms and dusty interiors. At once appearing as if from another age, but not one that is locatable. They are dislocated from themselves and from us at the same time. To return to the example of Cezanne again, he was painting at a time of crisis, when the world was no longer an utterly certain rationalist universe, if ever it were, where the certitude of the bourgeois revolutions and the Bonapartist regime no longer held the centre. Often in times of crisis the daydream becomes the escape route. For many of us who can barely summon the energy to face a cheerless reality of a world utterly hollowed out, the daydream allows more subversive thoughts to arise. A world without any meaningful use for a material history (not that it isn’t thought about and discussed academically). This world where meanings and all the problems that spring from it are eviscerated of all their potencies that could hold community and spirit together. Jackson’s paintings remind us gently, tacitly of a world that could be dwelt upon, thought about, remembered actively and touched upon in thought and gesture. The daydreamer might be the last person left alone in the library or the bar but still that person has thoughts that need sifting through and evaluating for their quality. A painting, a good painting is just that, a dwelling upon a thought or concept that has to be taken through the medium of paint to remind us of the important restorative qualities of just that act. |
| EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH | Sam Jackson |
| Exhibition: Vas Deferens |
| Exhibition Dates: Friday December 11th 2009 – Saturday January 23rd 2010 |
| “In my view, one of the likely agents of change is an artist called Sam Jackson. What does he do? He paints. Worse still, he often paints very small. I can’t think of a more revolutionary combination in London right now.” Edward Lucie-Smith Jackson’s predominantly small to miniature paintings operate between several axes of investigation. Whilst recalling Old Master works in tone and atmosphere, they embody the contemporary by way of transgressive subject matter and stark, psychological intensity. Form and line vie and give way to disrupt and obfuscate the image as we are led beyond surface to a place of instinctive violence, impulsive sexuality and unsteady psychological bearing. By continuing to make paintings that can still violate our sensibilities even in a time of unrepentant exposure to violent and sexual imagery, Jackson embraces tension and taboo, and simultaneously forces and seduces his audience to assimilate the erotic, pornographic and at times abject. These visceral, excessive works are, however, offset by moments of quietude defined by contemplative still lifes and portraits that oscillate between the reverential and the neurotic. Jackson’s studio practice is unrelenting, analogous to a form of free association where found images, mental images and memories combine to create manifest and latent content in the works themselves. At once obsessive, fetishist and beautiful, the paintings reveal both destructive and life affirming drives whilst becoming sublimating mechanisms for both artist and audience. Sam Jackson graduated in 2007 from the Royal Academy Schools in London and achieved instant recognition by going into the collections of Sir Norman Rosenthal, Kay Saatchi and David Roberts. Since then he has gone on to exhibit in Berlin, Frankfurt, Krakow, Los Angeles, Napoli, New York and Rome; and most recently has been curated into ‘British Art Now’ by Edward Lucie-Smith. Please contact gallery for images and further information SAM JACKSON by EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH Everyone who takes even a mild interest in the British contemporary art scene knows that the situation is changing, and changing fairly fast. Partly this is due to the recession. A financial crash inevitably changes the art-market. Some once solidly established reputations begin to look as shaky as the whole financial system. Partly it is due to the passage of time. The BritPop movement has been the only game in town for about fifteen years now. That is a long period for any art movement to last. Damien Hirst is showing his work at the Wallace Collection and (very soon) will show it in St. Paul’s. Tracey Emin is complaining that a hike in income tax may drive her out of the country. In avant-garde terms, certain kinds of success are almost as bad as failure. Nevertheless one feels the weight of an enormous inertia. So many people have investments in the current situation. Not simply financial commitments, but investments in careers, in institutions, in their own intellectual prestige. Change, now, will drive them out of their comfort zone. In my view, one of the likely agents of change is an artist called Sam Jackson. What does he do? He paints. Worse still, he often paints very small. I can’t think of a more revolutionary combination in London right now. It challenges so many shibboleths about the nature of today’s art. Painting has been pronounced dead and gone on many occasions since the end of the 1980s. Somehow it has always managed to survive. It seems to be ready to outlive video, installation and most kinds of conceptual art. These are either in the process of being overtaken by ever-new kinds of technology, or they deliver too little in the way of visual pleasure while requiring too much explanation. As a professional critic I ought not to say this, but what I secretly hope for, when I go to a show, is art that makes my job redundant – art that confronts you, and explains itself. Small scale does two things. It raises two fingers to the rhetoric that characterizes so much current art– a rhetoric of redundant scale. Does the work say more because it is so big? No, it often says less. The only relationship you can have with it is a public relationship, in a public space. I’m tired of being shouted at, and my guess is that a significant part of the audience for contemporary art is starting to feel the same way. The other thing it does, especially if the work is properly installed, is to make you focus on the image. You look more closely, with a greater degree of concentration. Sam Jackson has a demanding eye. He paints portraits that are representations of psychological states. He paints erotic images that deliver a sly sucker punch. You look once, and wonder what this little image is about. You look twice – and then you know. Time to blush at your own dirty thoughts, boys and girls. In a way, I hesitate to recommend some of these paintings - they’re so subversive. In another way they seem perfectly attuned to the times we live in. Just imagine – not so hard is it? – that you’re a banker on the run from a failed Ponzi scheme. If you collect Sam’s work, you can cram all your masterpieces into just one suitcase. Then it’s off to Rio, where they shoot down police helicopters and there’s no extradition treaty. |
Text | EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH | 2009
| SAM JACKSON by EDWARD LUCIE-SMITH |
| Exhibition: Vas Deferens |
| Exhibition Dates : Friday December 11th 2009 – Saturday January 23rd 2010 |
| Everyone who takes even a mild interest in the British contemporary art scene knows that the situation is changing, and changing fairly fast. Partly this is due to the recession. A financial crash inevitably changes the art-market. Some once solidly established reputations begin to look as shaky as the whole financial system. Partly it is due to the passage of time. The BritPop movement has been the only game in town for about fifteen years now. That is a long period for any art movement to last. Damien Hirst is showing his work at the Wallace Collection and (very soon) will show it in St. Paul’s. Tracey Emin is complaining that a hike in income tax may drive her out of the country. In avant-garde terms, certain kinds of success are almost as bad as failure. Nevertheless one feels the weight of an enormous inertia. So many people have investments in the current situation. Not simply financial commitments, but investments in careers, in institutions, in their own intellectual prestige. Change, now, will drive them out of their comfort zone. In my view, one of the likely agents of change is an artist called Sam Jackson. What does he do? He paints. Worse still, he often paints very small. I can’t think of a more revolutionary combination in London right now. It challenges so many shibboleths about the nature of today’s art. Painting has been pronounced dead and gone on many occasions since the end of the 1980s. Somehow it has always managed to survive. It seems to be ready to outlive video, installation and most kinds of conceptual art. These are either in the process of being overtaken by ever-new kinds of technology, or they deliver too little in the way of visual pleasure while requiring too much explanation. As a professional critic I ought not to say this, but what I secretly hope for, when I go to a show, is art that makes my job redundant – art that confronts you, and explains itself. Small scale does two things. It raises two fingers to the rhetoric that characterizes so much current art– a rhetoric of redundant scale. Does the work say more because it is so big? No, it often says less. The only relationship you can have with it is a public relationship, in a public space. I’m tired of being shouted at, and my guess is that a significant part of the audience for contemporary art is starting to feel the same way. The other thing it does, especially if the work is properly installed, is to make you focus on the image. You look more closely, with a greater degree of concentration. Sam Jackson has a demanding eye. He paints portraits that are representations of psychological states. He paints erotic images that deliver a sly sucker punch. You look once, and wonder what this little image is about. You look twice – and then you know. Time to blush at your own dirty thoughts, boys and girls. In a way, I hesitate to recommend some of these paintings - they’re so subversive. In another way they seem perfectly attuned to the times we live in. Just imagine – not so hard is it? – that you’re a banker on the run from a failed Ponzi scheme. If you collect Sam’s work, you can cram all your masterpieces into just one suitcase. Then it’s off to Rio, where they shoot down police helicopters and there’s no extradition treaty. |