Short Questions for Guidance
Neil Bickerton
A_Place Gallery
Installation View, Short Questions For Guidance, Neil Bickerton, A_Place, 2024
Neil Bickerton, ‘A field’, 15 x 24 cm, acrylic on board, 2022
Neil Bickerton, ‘A fence’, 26 x 19.5 cm, acrylic on board, 2023
Neil Bickerton, ‘The sun and the sun’s reflection’, 23.5 x 20 cm, acrylic on plywood, 2024
Neil Bickerton, ‘Flower’, 22 x 22 cm, acrylic on board, 2023
Installation View, Short Questions For Guidance, Neil Bickerton, A_Place, 2024
Short Questions for Guidance
12/04—26/04/2024
Tuesday & Thursday: 11-2pm, Sunday: 2-4pm & by appointment
This exhibition presents 31 notably small paintings. Neil Bickerton creates works that are deeply evocative of a particular time and place – though when and where those particulars are is unknown to the viewer. Often assembled from bits of board with framing devices, with assorted shapes and strips of wood glued to the surface, the paintings feature a range of subjects; the landscape and elements found in the terrain such as fences, trees, buildings or a monument; everyday objects like a book, a bowl or an apple; ephemeral experiences like the sun reflected in a body of water. The subjects are hazy, hanging somewhere between emerging and disappearing, with a colour range that verges on the sickly reds, greens and yellows associated with lomography and faded photographs.
Despite their size, as well as the apparently haphazard assemblage of surfaces and the slightness of their subjects, Bickerton’s paintings are highly considered and deliberate. Slight marks drifting off the edge of frames or the minuscule shifts in hue denoting the edge of a table, hill or tree become acutely consequential. They are made with an intensity of painterly activity that expands their scale and weight, all the while giving off the air of portability, like objects of devotion that are packed in a suitcase while travelling and hung on stray nails in temporary accommodation.
Bickerton’s work plays at the edge of what is considered ‘just enough’, where apparently simple things begin to tip their hand at a much more mysterious and complex undercurrent. It is as though Bickerton’s paintings are creating an ordinance survey map of an internal landscape, complete with spot heights and symbols of landmarks. To look at his work, especially such a number of paintings taken together, feels like orienteering through this country: up the hill, past the gate on the left, take a right turn at the obelisk and head straight towards the school. These are familiar sights with a hint of home. But in Bickerton’s work, the familiar is becoming increasingly strange.
Neil Bickerton is an artist living and working in Glasgow
Photo Credit: Sam O’Donnell