By Laura McLean-Ferris
All change. New president elect of the United States, New Year, new artreview.com, and now some new work for you to look at. A couple of paintings have caught my eye this week, first these from Brighton-based artist Joshua Uvieghara, who uses domestic decorating materials such as house paint and cable as elements in his paintings.
Joshua Uvieghara, Tectonic Trace, 2008, oil & household paint on board
These homely materials find a contrast in paintings that recall natural effects, such as the one above. In Tectonic Trace there is an organic crackling effect at the top and bottom, which, it seems from the title, attempts to evoke the splintering of the earth's tectonic plates. The scene appears to lie somewhere between abstraction and figuration – it’s possible to imagine, for example, that we are under the ground, caught in a crevasse, like the poor climber from Touching the Void. Or we might be looking from above into the bowels of the earth, or out through a cave. The pea soup green in the middle, with glowingly creamy stripes, is somewhat confusingly a mixture of sea, sky and nothing. The void indeed.
Uvieghara writes on his profile page that he is interested in the idea that painting is a distillation of 'the visual flood' of imagery around us. He also gets a touch of the Richard Princes with this painting on a car bonnet:
Joshua Uvieghara, Nebulustastic, 2007, coaxial cable and household paint on car bonnet
He manages to make those whites appear very bright using the bluish colours around them. This garish painting seems to convey celestial phenomena and the industrial space flight aspirations of civilisation. The use of home spun materials and the borrowing of Prince's macho-ist aesthetic adds a bit of humour too.