David Gillanders
August 18 to September 24, 2023

"I once had a friend who was building a crate to ship a big painting. It had to be good, and the plywood sides, braced by 1 x 3s, simply would not line up cleanly with the rest of the box. The wood was a bit warped, or cut slightly wrong, and my friend said something that has stuck with me ever since. “I hate it when materials assert themselves!” Working with materials is a tricky business. Over time they teach us what they will and won’t do. Every painter I know, and I dare say every painter, is compelled to engage with the materials of painting. Every bit of it, from the choice of surface to work on, to how that surface is prepared, the kind of paint used, how it is applied … all of it is a conversation with the material world.  Every painter knows that the materials will always assert themselves.  They will fight us. But in painting there is sometimes a lucky alchemy that takes place in that engagement wherein the materials transcend themselves, and their arrangement becomes a vessel for meaning. Somehow this coloured stuff, when it’s applied and organized in certain ways, can make us feel and think things. It can take us out of ourselves." 

The material world is a powerful place.