REVIEW IN ‘THE AGE’ BY DAN RULE OF SHOTS OFF THE DICES CURATED BY RHYS LEE
By Nicholas Thompson | June 28, 2015 | Comments Off on REVIEW IN ‘THE AGE’ BY DAN RULE OF SHOTS OFF THE DICES CURATED BY RHYS LEE
It’s downright refreshing to witness a curator – albeit a painter doing a one-off shift as a curator – frame his curatorial logic in terms of his mateship with the selected artists. While nepotism is a rampant, relatively unchecked and certainly unadmitted ailment of the art world, Shots off the Dices sees organiser and artist Rhys Lee use friendship (and painting) as the show’s binding thread. That’s all it needs, for Lee’s sensibilities as an artist creep out nicely amid this densely populated show of works. There’s plenty in the way of arcane, blurred and bled figuration here. American artist Patrick Shoemaker paints flattened, hazy figures – including a pack of wild dogs deep in a toothy dialogue (Beast Meeting, 2015) – that burn with vigour, movement and grim humour. Fellow US artist Sofia Arnold’s watercolours and oils, meanwhile, employ soft washes and intricate details and patterning to render mythical figures and abstracted landscapes in earthy greens, browns, yellows and pinks. There’s plenty more, including a grittily powerful new painting by William Mackinnon, which pictures his studio spattered with the detritus of painterly process; a couple of crackingly absurdist paintings by UK artist Lee Johnson; a pair of vibrant cubist works by Yvette Coppersmith; and a stunning abstraction by Matlok Griffiths.
