Jonny Green
24^th March – 12^th May 

Jonny Green makes paintings of sculptures… Mad-men rendered crudely in plasticine and electrical tape or abject-looking re-animated brains adorned with filthy paper flowers and grubby clockwork parts. Each depicted object/character seems to be demanding recognition and validation from the viewer in spite of their manifest flaws, they seem to be trying to adorn themselves in an attempt to make their appearance more palatable. In contrast to the gleeful, almost slapdash making of the sculptures, their subsequent rendering in paint is meticulous. Green explains this approach as ‘an attempt to dignify and document or give testament to something that seemingly lacks dignity or a voice’. The resulting paintings are both still-life and portrait, animate and inanimate. As viewers we experience a kind of cognitive dissonance as we are simultaneously attracted and repelled by them. Visually and conceptually the viewer finds themselves on unsteady ground, held in a point of tension between what is real and unreal, abstract yet representational.

This group of paintings represents a particular period of work executed between 2013 and 2019, some of the works are from the artists own collection and have never been exhibited before.

Jonny Green was trained at the Royal College of Art and has exhibited widely both domestically and internationally, his paintings are held in public and private collections all over the world.