Champs Noir
18 Jan – 12 Feb 2023
Terrace Gallery @Patchworks, London E10 7JQ
Curated by Simon Leahy-Clark

Gallery Text

A multi-disciplinary exhibition of black artworks curated by SPACE studio artist Simon Leahy-Clark, featuring SPACE artists Michael Ashcroft (Britannia Works), Jost Munster (Deborah House) and Mutalib Man (Haymerle Road).

Prompted by a large flat-screen TV that intruded on Terrace’s previous home at the William IV public house in Leyton, and acting as an epilogue to his solo show of black works (2018-2022) at Barbican Arts Trust Group late last year, Simon Leahy-Clark has curated a multi-disciplinary exhibition of black works at Terrace’s new home at Patchworks in Leyton.

Including over 30 artists working in painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, collage and print, this exhibition brings together works from the 1970s to the present day and examines the continued allure of monochrome black in artistic practice, given all its historic precedence. The works in the exhibition come from disparate starting points and processes but all explore black as the main theme. The curation was initially conceived as a way to take authorship of the ready-made blank TV screen and incorporate it into the hang of the works. After the move to Patchworks, this concept became redundant – the TV has gone but the exhibition remains as a residue.

18 Jan – 12 Feb 2023

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Dark Leaves

Orchestrated by artist and curator, Simon Leahy-Clark, Champs Noir was an ambitious exhibition at the new space for the established London-based Terrace Gallery. I was invited to contribute a specific work by Leahy-Clark after studio discussions. The work, which was part of ongoing investigations into the ways that the painted surface can be the site for visual exploration of the fragment, proximity and distance.

Dark Leaves is a work which was made to consider ideas related to how a viewer can be ‘pulled’ toward a surface, to pause and to examine abstracted traces and remainders of pushed and pulled paint. Rendered almost completely with ivory black, it makes use of glazes and extenders to offer passages which reflect light and others which have a matte finish. These contribute to the development of a visually complex surface, which itself invites an extended viewing experience.