Young British painter Dean Melbourne unveils his first solo show in London in July, alongside the his inaugural work included in the 2014 Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy.
One of the central works in Garland – the solo show presented by contemporary curators Coates and Scarry at Gallery 8 on Duke Street, will be White Phosphor, whose darker sister, Black Phosphor will be down the road as part of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition.
Garland alludes to the painter’s longing for a personal Arcadia. The works in Garland reveal Melbourne’s sense of “internal contradiction”. A often precariously balanced interplay between dark-ness and light, masculine and feminine, rural and urban, contemporary and ancient, the common-place and the arcane.
This work establishes a practice of exploring these contradiction and navigating to and from and between. An inward exploration attempting to reveal a multiplicity and complex nature that is familiar to us all.
The large pastel work, The Riddle, marks a return to an investigation into a complex relationship with femininity, and is informed by the palette and source images appropriated from fashion editorials, catalogues and wedding photography. Melbourne has created a kaleidoscopic world that is as vague and unavailable to the viewer as authentic femininity is to the artist.
Dean Melbourne’s works talk to our primal selves, of sexuality and of fetish and ritual, our base needs. Sometimes dark and using the cover of night as a vehicle for obscured nocturnal activity, through to the ephemeral yet potent version of soft focus, lightness, otherworldly most mystical forms of the feminine. Associating freely between sources and images and subjects in a way that an internet native generation finds normal.
Melbourne paints in layers, using a variety of paints – emulsions, oils, washes, glazes, household gloss, and includes in his work references to inspiration as varied as The Magus, A Midsummer Nights Dream, Keats and Shelley.
Open from Monday 7th July till Saturday 19th July 11.00 pm – 7.00 pm with preview on Wednesday 9th July 6.00-9.30pm. Press for the preview please RSVP to abigail@damsonpr.com.
Gallery 8, 8 Duke Street, St James’s, London SW1Y 6BN
Viewing also by private appointment – please call Richard Scarry on 07540 793 264.
Dean Melbourne will host a meet the artist afternoon on the Saturday 12th July 2.00-4.00pm.
Dean Melbourne (b.1976) has exhibited widely including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2009, 2010 and 2014 at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol in 2012.
