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From: Terry Barton
Category: Art
Date: 16 August 2005
The latest showing at Seven Seven Contemporary Art represents an about face in the curatorial style of the gallery. Dislocated Ground gathers the divergent work of Jessika Worrall, Carey Dean and J L Dean, producing a selection of 2D work that lacks neither colour or content
The drawings of Carey Dean are a chaotic mix of flora and fauna that somehow come together to achieve beautiful and compelling imagery. My favourite is the third of the series: the human heart scaled up, with its veins and arteries terminating in a flower, tentacles, the head of a snake, and a bird’s wing. The drawing is concise, nightmarish and brings to mind the work of Giger.
In the smaller of the two rooms, Worrall’s work (last shown at the Phillips Gallery in Manchester, and at Fresh Art ‘99 in New York, flaunts the kind of obsessive surface that minimalists have nightmares about. Her two cityscapes of Venice and Manchester are overwhelming compositions that take the form of vast glittering circuit boards. In comparison, her two latest additions in the larger room look as if they have spent the last sixty years in the cellar of a derelict house. The surfaces are rich with hand-drawn maps, decomposing photographic elements, and a rust-coloured material that spreads across the surface like a spider web, or some kind of insidious creeping vine. The titles refer to the war, some unknown quarter of the continent that has been stifled and forgotten.
The available content in J L Dean’s work: a series of four small paintings, is redolent of the archaeological and literary references alluded to in the titles. The apparent use of computers in Dean’s practice marks his departure from the school of photographic painting to a kind of post-photoshop use of the medium which clothes digital efficience with all the quirks and inadequacies of a painter’s brush. The result is Pompeii in plastic, and two cheap spotlamps – a space that loses none of its claustrophobia despite having a huge file size.
Dislocated Ground is at Seven Seven Contemporary Art, Broadway Market, London E8, until August 27th. Details: 07808 166215 info@sevenseven.org.uk
Terry Barton
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