Show Notes
This month on A Geography of Colour podcast I am talking with painter Simon Callery about his relationship with colour.
Simon challenges what painting can do today. He makes work that exists on the margins of what can be understood as painting. On his studio wall is written the word ‘INVERT’ to remind him every day to subvert the established conventions of image-based painting, to find new roles and develop new forms for painting. He intends that an encounter with one of his paintings is as much for the body as it is for the eye.
He has worked in the landscape alongside field archaeologists on many projects and applies this knowledge he find here to works made in the urban environment and also to developing studio based work. The visceral qualities of the excavation sites have made him sensitive to the physical qualities of landscape and the relationship of material to time.
He embraces the fact that his paintings share spatial qualities we associate with sculpture. He feels that living in an image dominant culture the stress on the visual in everyday life inevitably suppresses the other senses. He is working to give painting a material body and as a consequence, a better awareness of our own.
Simon Callery (London, 1960). Graduated from Cardiff College of Art in 1983. Has shown extensively in the UK and internationally since the mid 1990’s. Public collections include: Arts Council Collection, London. Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo. Birmingham Museum Trust. British Museum. European Investment Bank, Luxembourg. Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris. Nottingham Trent University. Stanhope plc. Tate.
Forthcoming shows 2023: Inauguration. Lo Brutto Stadl. Paris. Arcadia for all? Rethinking Landscape Painting Now. Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery. University of Leeds. Simon Callery & Vlatka Horvat. Annex14. Zurich. Space as Duty of Care. Studio G7. Bologna. Ouverture. Palazzo delle Esposizioni. Rome. Simon Callery & Georg Schmidt. Raum X. London. Simon Callery. Contact Paintings. CAB. Burgos. Spain. The Surface of Place and the Depth of Place. Rudolfinum. Prague.
Thanks to Stuart Bowditch for editing the podcast, Arts Council England for supporting this project with a Develop Your Creative Practice Grant and Contemporary British Painting, an artist-led group that I'm a member of, for publicising this.
LINKS:
https://www.instagram.com/simon.callery
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/art-now-simon-callery
www.ruthphilo.co.uk
https://www.instagram.com/ageographyofcolour
https://www.contemporarybritishpainting.com
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