Obsessive Impulsion

Abstract

Impulsion is a driving force; the impetus, the motive or influence behind an action or process. Obsessive Impulsion is an exhibition that focuses on the artists' passion as it is revealed through the methodologies of five diverse practices. In both concept and technique, each series of works reflects a quiet flamboyance that drives artists to create an appearance of excess and yet there is no sense of overreach. Jodie Cunningham confesses to being a "chromophile" with an obsession for colour, circles, pattern and "the delights of Perspex". U.K. Frederick delights in the tensions created between flannel shirts that might have been worn by Kurt Cobain and the abstracted light passing through the fabric in her evocative series of photograms. In the dextrous hands of Ann McMahon, recycled bread wrappers index domestic ritual through complex 'colour field' weaves that mirror the days on a calendar. Alarmed at inexorable environmental degradation, Michele England blends activism with domesticity in eccentric works where 'kitsch' household objects carry the "great moral challenge" that faces the planet. Suzanne Moss's commanding paintings examine colour through its absence and presence. Exploring the ways that colours interact, she experiments with a saturated palette that reverberates throughout the gallery-as if in conversation with the other works. Obsessive Impulsion is an exhibition in which each of the artists presents work based on personal obsessions and we, the audience, follow the lengthy, painstaking processes through which they come to realise their ideas.