Potatoes II - Matthew Swift
Potatoes II
£1,750
Matthew Swift
Matthew Swift makes paintings and artworks that move between traditional parameters marked by fabric over stretcher bars to the more open potential of the expanded field. Walking through a world in continual flux, in particular the landscape of the North Kent Coast and the creeks of Melbourne, brings an overlapping of experiences and geographies to his work, encompassing the rural, industrial, agricultural, and urban. These contrasts of space and place are a critical starting point. He implements a non-observational approach, instead working obliquely and abstractly, discovering alternative resonances through his exploration of materials, surfaces, and colour. He stitches together disparate sections of painted material mapping and navigating a path through a patchwork of codes, clouds and signs.
Bio
Matthew gained an MFA in studio art from NYU in 1999 where he interned for Amy Sillman. He has exhibited in New York, Philadelphia, Melbourne, London and Kent and shown extensively in group and two-person shows, including ‘Constructure’ at Standpoint Gallery and ‘Dialogue with DeKooning’ at RCA. He co-curated ‘24 Hours of Everything’ with Paula Stuttman for ‘Whitstable Biennale Satellite’ 2018. In 2014, he set up Ground Collective for which he has curated a series of exhibitions, most recently a week’s residency ‘Incubator of Ideas’ at APT Gallery (October 2020, during the pandemic) and consequently ‘Ground Work’, also at APT Gallery (October 2021). In 2008, he had a residency at the Florence Trust. He was shortlisted for the Chiara Williams SOLO Award (2018). His work is in private collections in Europe, United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States. His studio is currently in Whitstable, Kent.
How does your work for this exhibition relate to Uncertain Edges?
I often sew fabric and canvas together; I am attempting to make something definite here – ‘this piece goes with this piece!’ but it always feels provisional, there is always an uncertainty, it could have been a different swatch stitched in a different place, but it is this dynamic that gives the work energy; playing with this sense of chance.
Can you explain your artistic process?
Walking and moving through landscapes, especially the hinterland between urban, rural and industrial, is the starting point. Playing with materials, paints, pigments, surfaces etc is a second stage of process, allowing the experiences of wondering and noticing, and the images gathered from different spaces to play their part; not working observationally, instead responding physically with materials. The third stage pieces together disconnected elements of fabric and canvas, often made at different times, sometimes sewn with thread, creating visual placements that can be unexpected and jarring whilst extracting essences of past hidden experiences.
Matthew Swift
Can you explain something about the content of your work and the inspiration/impetus behind it?
Though not figurative or obviously observational, there are narratives in my work. Allusions to landscape, movement, space, clouds and light are present and tell tales of a body’s experience of being in different places and spaces.
Matthew Swift
How and where do you make your work?
My studio is my garden in Whitstable, it has a couple of big walls that I can pin pieces of canvas and drawings to, it has shelves with many books and magazines and couple of desks for different sorts of work – one has a sewing machine and is a bit ‘cleaner’ and the other tends to be for messy paint experiments.
Matthew Swift