Talking Things
It is a very strange affair,
To realise how things are talking;
Discovering the ordinary ear,
Which can listen but never hear.
Tung Shan
The show’s title, ‘Talking Things’, is derived from a Japanese koan, a riddle from Zen Buddhist practice which is posited to transcend limitations of dualistic thinking, logical reasoning and language.
Bunch and Hicks ask questions, voicing subtlety and doubt.
Is it real?
What cast the shadow?
Theirs is a meticulous and slow, seemingly time-warped, approach to what might be called still life.
Bunch paints shadows of borrowed invested objects, which seem to exist outside of time, simultaneously futuristic and primordial, like sealed time-capsules of buried memories.
Hick’s work is a slowed down depiction of a fast creative act, an elastic time-travel of sorts through art history.
These are things which evoke the mutant or hybrid, don’t explain the manner of their making, or offer up a clear reason for their existence.
Both artists question our propensity to label, categorise and objectify, and our perception and construction of reality, the slippery place where interpretation, truth and authenticity lies.
Their approach is one of rigorous ambiguity, the work sitting silently somewhere between the real and illusory, the figurative and abstract, the sophisticated and primitive, volume and flatness, presence and absence.
ARTIST BIOS:
Roland Hicks
Recent solo shows include The Fourth Wall at Hastings Contemporary 2023/4 and Backstreet Geometry, at 57W57 Arts, New York, 2022.
He is the third recipient [following Barbara Walker and Penny McCarthy] of the biennial Evelyn Williams Drawing Award, awarded at the 2021 Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize exhibition.
Numerous solo and group presentations at venues including Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London; Vane Gallery, Newcastle; Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam; Sid Motion Gallery, London; Huddersfield Art Gallery; Oriel Davies, Newtown; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Saatchi Gallery, London; Volta, Basel.
He has twice been shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize in both 2018 and 2021, and is now a member of Contemporary British Painting artist group.
He has also featured in The John Moores Painting Prize, The Creekside Open, Wells Art Contemporary, The Jerwood Drawing Prize, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and the NatWest Art Prize.
Exhibitions he has curated include The Tiresome Truth [also featuring Angela de la Cruz and Helene Appel] at ASC Gallery, London in 2019 and Humble As Hell [also featuring Susan Collis, Neil Gall, Nicky Hirst, Paul Housley, Duncan Macaskill, Stephen Palmer, Cathie Pilkington, Joel Tomlin and Richard Woods] at the Kurt Schwitters Merz Barn, Elterwater in 2017.
Studied at Slade School Of Art [MFA], & Winchester School of Art [BA]. He lives and works in London.
Lesley Bunch
Bunch was awarded the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2022. In 2024 she was elected as a London Group member, and as a committee member for Contemporary British Painting.
Recent solo shows include ‘Absence : Presence’ in Rome, ‘Shadow Language’ in Seoul, and ‘Cut Two Pieces in Three’ in London.
Group shows include: ‘Slow Painting’ Studio KIND, ‘Adrift’ originalprojects, ‘X’ Contemporary British Painting, Newcastle Contemporary Art; ‘Silent Disco ‘23’ curated by Graham Crowley; ‘Tapped’ Manifest Gallery Ohio; ‘The London Group Open 2023’; ‘50th International Award Exhibition’ San Diego Art Institute; ‘Stand and See’ Wimbledon Space; ‘Multitude’ FondazioneLuciana Matalon Milan; ‘Prized’: Old Parcels Office Artspace; ‘ArtWorks Open’ Barbican Arts Group Trust; and ‘Ten Artists to Watch’ Los Angeles Center for Digital Art.
Bunch studied Fine Art & Art History at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London. This was followed by an MA in Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where she focused on Japanese art of the Edo Period. In 2014 she completed a year’s residency at Wimbledon College of Arts, University of the Arts London.
Her work is held in private collections throughout the UK, US, Italy, Germany and South Korea, and in the Priseman Seabrook Collection of 21st Century British Painting. She lives and works in London.
