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Substance and Accident

This exhibition entitled ‘Substance and Accident’ was held at the Mummery + Schnelle Gallery, London (11 May - 23 June 2012). It comprised four paintings (244 x 122cm, illustrations 1-4) in the central gallery (installation shots 9 and 12) and four time-based works (illustrations 5-8) in the back gallery (installation shots 10 and 11) and marked out a new direction for Harding’s abstract practice. Harding’s research investigates how the negotiation between control and contingency, and the use of modernist linear devices in abstract art could be employed as an enabling dynamic in contemporary abstract painting. In this process of questioning the nature of painting and the coherence of meaning associated with the interpretation of ‘painterliness’, Harding’s research examines the key significance of the materiality of the medium itself as a dynamic agent in the process of production and the generating of ‘meaning’. As the heavily loaded canvasses dry, the surfaces shift, with the paint often dripping, thereby escaping the boundary of the canvas frame and allowing the applied paint to overrun into the gallery space. Harding’s sustained investigation of this dynamic process re-conceives of the painterly within the drying process as part of a kinetic theatrical event. Moreover, Harding’s research questions the ‘objectness’ of the artwork as his abstract paintings are characterised by a sort of ‘blankness’ or lack of modulation. The results question how abstraction in painting is approached and understood as a relatively coherent language with carefully invested expressive meanings. Portfolio evidences research.

Reviews of the Exhibition included David Moxon in Painters Table: http://painters-table.com/link/abstraktion/alexis-harding-substance-accident

Daily Serving: http://dailyserving.com/2012/06/alexis-harding-substance-and-accident/

Essays included:

'Pour, Drop, Roll, Slide, Drip', written by Sam Cornish, for Abstract Critical, 30 June 2012: http://abstractcritical.com/article/pour-drop-roll-slide-drip/

'Alexis Harding: Substance and Accident,' written by Stuart Elliot for Mummery & Schelle:

http://www.mummeryschnelle.com/pdf/substanceandaccident.pdf

Ben Luke, Art Review, September 2012

http://www.artreviewdigital.com/index.cfm/artreview-digital/store.magazine/title/ArtReview:%20September%202012/magID/81/archive/true