EXTENDED GESTURES EXTENDED
Ben Pell | Charlie Harding
Georgie North | Sean Mcdowell
01.05.19 – 18.05.19

The title for this show is borrowed from the writers Claude Cernuschi and Andrzej Hercyznski who in their essay, The Subversion of Gravity in Jackson Pollock’s Abstractions, describe Pollock’s employment of gravity as a means “to extend the duration of his gestures”.1 In easel painting (and in some forms of sculpture), finding a new way to form the gesture has been an important pursuit by many artists, albeit, by the brush or through other less unorthodox means (Brice Marden with his extended stick or Richard Serra with his frenetic lead flinging, both serve as appropriate examples of this type of activity).

The four artists in Extended Gestures Extended build on this endeavour. They pursue methods that are provisional and intuitive and form marks that reference bodily activity. Bold strokes of colour are applied with careful attention to the stroke’s intensity and speed. They innovate ways to disperse paint, be it, through maximum thinning, or strokes that are at once, abbreviated and extended.

In Extended Gestures Extended the gesture is distilled, the painting process renovated and the very orthodoxies of easel painting challenged.

Aaron Martin
Curator