Propositions on the conditions of contemporary painting languages
- Submitting institution
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Staffordshire University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Lists 86
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- Lion+Lamb, London; New Court Gallery, Repton; The SE9 Container Gallery, London
- Brief description of type
- A practice-based artefact and a solo exhibition that address different aspects of a single project and are collectively greater than the sum of their parts.
- Open access status
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- Month
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- Year
- 2015
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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A - The C3 Centre: Creative Industries and Creative Communities
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Key created and exhibited original paintings that examine the underlying ideas and concepts involved in contemporary debates about how the terms ‘figurative’ and ‘abstract’ are related.
‘Second Novelty at Square Pier’ (2014) bridged between explicitly figurative imagery and more oblique referencing of the figure within abstract visual languages. It was selected for the group exhibition ‘Enclosures, Elsewhere’, Lion+Lamb, London, curated by James Fisher (29th March-19th April 2014).
The ‘Different Kinds of Matter’ exhibition (2014) considered how early- to mid-twentieth-century Modernist painting presented naturally occurring forms through decisive, geometric abstractions.
Key’s paintings investigated how this work had empowered later abstract paintings to privilege visual illusion. Her ‘Different Kinds of Matter’ works combine oil and acrylic media to render a range of surface textures which complicate and contrast against their visual depictions of glacial shapes. By doing so, they emphasized the possibility of treating ‘figurative’ and ‘abstract’ as a partially physical, tactile debate. The works depict these shapes as floating in an illusory space, as opposed to existing in a defined space with a consistent materiality that can be grasped through the visual register alone. Through extending the ‘abstract’ and ‘figurative’ relationship into touch and texture, the research explored how painters’ treating abstraction as a purely visual language can reinforce hegemonic political and aesthetic expectations about what naturally occurring forms are and what they might mean. This solo exhibition took place at New Court Gallery in Repton, Derbyshire (14 Oct - 30 Nov 2014). She gave an artist’s talk and public discussion at the Gallery on 14 October 2014. Upon invitation, Key contributed the ‘Different Kinds of Matter’ painting ‘Discreet Music’ (2014) to the ‘Contemporary British Abstract Painting’ group exhibition, held at the SE9 Container Gallery, London and curated by the prominent artists Terry Greene and Matthew Macauley (28th Feb-11th April 2015).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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