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One Person Exhibition at Karsten Schubert, London

This exhibition showcased a group new paintings (oil on canvas)and the availability of viewing studies on paper. Unlike Holyhead’s 2009 solo exhibition (ten paintings), this selection showed more diversity and experimentation in approaching form, surface and application of the medium; as opposed to the more unified approach of the previous exhibition.

Technically, the research examines and negotiates the production of, and translation from, an extensive period of production that is primarily linked to small watercolour drawings. These drawings progress to more object-like paintings that require a time-sensitive performative element. These surfaces are engaged simultaneously in both marking and erasing the surface within a limited time (usually one day), highlighting a desire for the act of painting to remain in the present while renegotiating painting’s historical conventions.

Theoretically, the group demonstrated Holyhead’s non-linear process in the construction of meaning and how new dialogues open up across a group of paintings, locating themselves outside the confines of the autonomous painted space. Each work delivered a surface, gesture, colour and compositional sensibility not informed by any of the others, and continued registering how Holyhead sets up complex dialogues between present time and prescribed/remembered act.

The exhibition aimed to locate Holyhead’s latest research developments. The exhibited group represents how abstract language is currently being renegotiated – providing fresh interpretations of historically embedded concepts and functions (e.g. how gesture functions as content when mediated through intuition and improvisation, while simultaneously held in tension by precise positioning of geometric form and unfamiliar scale. The exhibition resulted in two paintings being acquired for the Tate Collection and one painting in the Government Art Collection, on show at Number 10 Downing Street. Review: Sherman, Sam, ‘Picks: Robert Holyhead’, Artforum, 24 October 2010: www.artforum.com (included in submitted portfolio)

Publication (Monograph): Robert Holyhead, published by Ridinghouse, London. Interview with Anthony Spira (Director of MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK).