Richard Stone
the end of england
SOLO EXHIBITION
Curated by Daniel Barnes
Galleries Goldstein, Coronet Street, London N1
8 – 10 November, 12 – 6pm ***Ends tomorrow***
Richard Stone’s England is a land of stilted possibility; it is a fable, shrouded in a monochrome fog that conceals a world of unfurling romanticisms. And it is reaching its end.
Stone takes a radical approach to reworking themes of popular mythology, cultural identity and collective memory, based on a series of conversations with curator Daniel Barnes.
In an awkward gap between painting and sculpture, Stone has created a single installation from disparate yet distinct works which take the viewer to the edge of an almost imperceptible decline.
The centrepiece of the installation is a group of paintings, where monochromatic, stormy surfaces gradually unveil ripples of colour that belie Stone’s deconstruction of the English landscape.
In the eye of this quietly violent storm is a vision of a world where there is only a passing distinction between myth and reality as if all that is solid melts into air.
Accompanying works see figures encased in wax, from miners, petrified in a balletic state of motion, to the magpie unable to bear its own sorrow. A delicately pencilled gate too, looks out on to an idyllic but absent view, whilst a monumental oak shield speaks of an ideologically tarnished heroism.
The installation is a portent storm that threatens to swell and consume everything in its wake, oscillating between possibility and paradox, archaeology and invention, history and fantasy.
At the end of england, memory is the only reality and objects are the only trace of what has been lost.
Leave a Reply