Callum Innes: Discourse
Over the past 20 years Callum Innes has developed one of the most notable practices in contemporary painting.
His spare yet complex works test and explore the possibilities of this most historical of mediums. This exhibition presents a selection from one of his most distinctive bodies of work.
Prolific and incredibly rigorous, Innes works on several different paintings at a time assessing one against the other. He works in series – Exposed Paintings, Identified Forms, Isolated Forms, Repetition Formed Paintings and the focus of this exhibition – Monologues.
The works shown here from the Monologue series are monumental in scale. Here Ivory Black oil paint is applied horizontally to the canvas then turpentine is brushed onto the painted surface from bottom to top, the solvent is in turn allowed to run back through the paint in its own time and space. These particular works are always made in one sitting; the artist describes them as ‘instant paintings’ yet they are probably some of the rarest within his practice.
'Innes’s particular process involves the removal as well as the application of paint. Pitting paint against turpentine or less often shellac, he balances painting and unpainting somehow off-balance, the one not cancelling the other out, but adding to it, illuminating it, clarifying it. His combination of creation and destruction destabilises the received idea that while making something takes a long time, unmaking is often the work of a moment. In doing this he introduces into the experience of his paintings a new kind of time.'
– Dr Fiona Bradley
