Homage to Catalunya, Oil on canvas, 2007

“Tristram Tyler makes pictures of landscapes which often seem to contain an air of foreboding or melancholy at the same time as a sensual pleasure in the handling of paint. Using his own images of real places as starting points, the paintings are worked over and over, finding in this sometimes brutal evolutionary process their own formal balance. As elements of the original image become abstracted to the point of apparent meaninglessness or simply left out as no longer relevant, other passages of paint intervene and take up positions, changing the tone and mood of the work.

“Once drawn in by their plausible space and enticing colour, the paintings begin to have the effect of unravelling our habitual ways of reading and interpreting what we are looking at. Tyler makes it seem not only reasonable but perfectly correct that a spatter of yellow paint should be emerging from what seems to be part of a concrete flyover or that the only way sand could be on a beach is if someone painted it there, with big sweeping brushstrokes pushing it in like the tide. 

“Grounded in the known landscape, these places exist as hybrids of memory and forgetfulness, shaped by time and their own unknowable internal logic, not entirely unlike ourselves.”
 

“5” is an outburst of creativity from a new generation of Bristol-based artists, hosted by the Awning Project at the Spyglass Restaurant on Welsh Back.  

The exhibition features work by Tristram Tyler, Gareth Shehean, Luke Knight, Anne Deeming and Gus Cummins and presents an opportunity to experience a rich variety of contemporary art.

The five artists, selected by Awning Project curator Tony Smith, use a wide range of techniques to deal with concerns ranging from memory to mass production. Bold abstract paintings devoid of visible brushstrokes hang alongside pale, intricate works in watercolour and pencil; the visual language of packaging and consumerism cohabits with painterly melancholy and hallucinogenic colour.

The result is an intense yet surprisingly harmonic cocktail of art with the kind of flavour which will linger long on your palate...

"5" runs from 5th - 17th Jan and is open from 11am - 6.00pm at weekends and 5.00pm - 8.00pm weds, thurs and fridays. Many works are visible 24hrs in the illuminated windows.