Adam Dix / Tim Phillips: Programming Myth, Sumarria Lunn

until 30 Jun 12



In all the houses we knew when I was growing up a piece of furniture would always be present that nowadays would look peculiar. Like the one below.




Most would have this characteristic cushion and would be made out of wood. I hated the telephone tables. They always meant no privacy. They would be mathematically placed in the most accessible and open space in each house. Sometimes whole romances, secret calls in the middle of the night, whole dramas would be played out around them. The constant fear of being caught, the constant fear of a ring in public from a stalker or the torturing silence of a lover. Over time, my hatred for this wooden furniture turns into nostalgia.

Then there was the dentist’s. A waiting room wall covered top to bottom in an autumnal forest scene. Oppressive. Or there would be pictures of mountains. Closing down on you. Why were there always mountains?

And then, there were the visits to relatives or vague family acquaintances, formal, always on cold nights, dressed in Sunday best for people we couldn’t care less for. They would always have plastic flowers or foliage, inside crystal, next to the chocolates.

When I started descending into Sumarria Lunn, the long stairway, confined, with some extra steps, made me excitingly nervous. I would soon realise what a perfect intro the gallery stairway itself was for what I found inside. There they were, all of them: the telephone tables, the Alps, the plastic foliage. Interlocked into sectarian and alien funereal constructs with my childhood fears, TV sci-fi programmes, folkloric masks and rituals. As if suddenly stumbling into a Cult, or a forgotten civilisation, I realised these paintings and sculptures were so authentic that were it not for being in a gallery, I would, yes, be scared.

Ethno-rituals, Rudolf Steiner, Lost, The Freemasons, Quatermass, The Midwich Cuckoos, Maydays, Carnivals, childhood memories and childhood furniture, all sculpted into one document of an otherworldly time.

A compulsory visit for any sci-fi sensibility. Bizarre love triangles.


more info:
http://www.sumarrialunn.com/ http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/listings/e705/programming-myth-with-adam-dix-and-tim-phillips-at-sumarria-lunn-gallery#.T-h-YpH4LIg http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/listings/e705/programming-myth-with-adam-dix-and-tim-phillips-at-sumarria-lunn-gallery#.T-h-YpH4LIg