Press Release – Exhibition
For Immediate Release
Philip Maltman – Paintings
The Sutton Gallery (newly open on Dundas Street, Edinburgh) is proud to present an
extensive exhibition of abstract paintings by the Scottish-born and London-based
artist Philip Maltman.
Maltman was born in Ayrshire in 1950, where he was captivated by the drama of
Ailsa Craig. The rugged landscape continues to inform his practice, particularly in
abstracted works made from beach-walks where flotsam and jetsam are depicted
from above in a way that recognizes their sense of balance and counterpoise with
each other.
Focusing on the last ten years, the exhibition features works from all of Maltman’s
most important series over this period, including works inspired by the writings (and
in particular the carefully-coded notebooks) of James Joyce, works inspired by his
garden, works that draw on the lyricism of rap music and works that abstract and
interrogate questions of landscape and seasonality.
The act of writing on canvas has been a recurring feature of Maltman’s practice ever
since he was at Hornsey College of Art and Ravensbourne College of Art in the late
1960s and 1970s. As in the work of Cy Twombly, Maltman’s paintings display an
intense sensitivity to the histories behind each object he depicts and phrase he
extracts. However, an important aesthetic in the work is also that of “play”, a notion
Maltman inherits from another of his artistic heroes: Don Van Vliet (Captain
Beefheart).
Gallery Director Reuben Sutton has commented: “I am delighted to be displaying
Philip Maltman’s vibrant and dramatic abstract paintings in The Sutton Gallery. A
profoundly sensitive and experimental Scottish artist, his work displays great
affinities with some of the most innovative painters of the last thirty years. As the
great Peter Schjeldahl wrote of Joan Micthell: “every mark seems to have its own
personality’”.
While at Hornsey, Maltman was active within the revolutionary student movement
there in 1968. Completing his studies at Ravensbourne College of Art, his degree
show eschewed conventional presentation and instead consisted of his studio,
covered in plastic and gorily splattered with red paint.
His more recent work retains this intense energy but it is charged with a sense of
stillness (meditation is a crucial part of Maltman’s practice). The drama of his
paintings comes from the balancing of abstract and symbolic marks on subtle
backgrounds where the space between objects is as active in the works as the
marks themselves.
As Maltman himself has remarked: “I extend my experience and enjoyment of the
world by making artworks. This invariably results in chaos and sometimes in an
acceptable order, which can be called painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, or
photography; generically speaking, an artwork. Artworks for me are about mark
making, drawn, painted, scratched, gouged, flooded, scrubbed, stuck, dried or
dusted. The mark is paramount whether accidental or deliberate and is recognised
as primarily an attempt to convey the accident of passion before the secondary
concerns of deliberate representation or composition.”
Maltman has exhibited widely across the UK, including RA Summer exhibitions, the
Demarco Trust in Edinburgh, Angela Flowers Gallery, Rowley Gallery, Piers
Freeham Gallery, Clink Wharf Gallery in London, Mclaurin Art Gallery in Ayr, Urmson
Burnett Gallery in Salisbury and “mac” in Birmingham. In 2000, his work was
exhibited as part of the John Moore Contemporary Painting 21 exhibition. In 2009, he
was nominated by Rebecca Walker as one of the top ten artists on Saatchi Online
and he was shortlisted for the John Moore Painting Prize in 2010.
- Ends –
For more information, images and interview requests, please call Colin Herd on
07854972930 or email colin@thesuttongallery.com
Philip Maltman
5th October – 26th October 2013
Open Tues – Sat 11am – 5pm
The Sutton Gallery
18a Dundas Street
Edinburgh
EH16 5AG
www.thesuttongallery.com