This month the L-gallery hosts some
little sculptures made mostly out of painted canvas and glazed ceramic.  But in fact the artist who made them, our very own Abi Freckleton, is more
interested in their relation to painting than to sculpture. Her five works for the
L-gallery are, she says, intended to “propose painting as something that is
more than just putting paint onto canvas. Challenging its flatness, edge and support".

Her use of paint on canvas is certainly pretty
unusual – unstretched canvas is painted, then folded up into little pedestals
on top of which she stands her little shards of ceramic.  Most of these pieces of ceramic began life as
simple smears of clay – brushstrokes you could call them.  She’d argue that they aren’t really that
different from a brushstroke made in paint. These brushstrokes stand up on
their own though, propped up, rather than bounded by, the canvas that supports
them. 

Abi graduated from a
BA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art in June, and since then has been
continuing her investigation into how making – specifically using paint and clay
– can become a way of thinking.  This is
where it starts to get a bit too philosophical; suffice to say she’s into seeing
and feeling rather than pondering and reasoning and conceptualizing. The
physical and visual experience of making stuff is what interests her. 

Her degree show works combined ceramic with
other painted or printed elements. And, as with the works here, the arrangement
and grouping of things is as important a part of the ‘painting’ process as the
making of the individual elements. These elements are constantly fluxing from
studio to exhibition and back again – meaning the works themselves only ever
exist temporarily. Lets hope they stick around in the L-gallery for the rest of
the month at least.