Ambiguity, mystery, intrigue: pervasive themes in the confounding work of Dan Coombs and Freddie Bannister; themes that are activated by Coombs’ emboldening and Bannister’s disconcertingly discrete use of the brush.
Dan Coombs, born in 1971, here presents a selection of collages on paper, employing both cut paper and paint, and paintings on canvas. In each work is depicted at least one human figure and at most two; they are intensely provocative, the viewer compelled to encounter each, resplendent in strengths, weaknesses, guilty pleasures, and sensitivities. They are instantly recognisable and yet simultaneously not; each are characters we have encountered, choosing some to know better than others. Laden with nuances and intricacies, these paintings are remarkable in the complexity they betray via such formal simplicity. That Coombs often employs just one colour, cut and pasted paper, and a select few marks to make his work is astounding; a statement he would likely respond to with a broad smile and shrug of the shoulders.
Freddie Bannister, born 2002, with his delicately detailed approach, lays bare an emotional ambiguity in his selection of drawings and paintings on paper. Deftly dislocating images and scenes from their narrative, Bannister’s works evidence a comparatively voyeuristic approach to image-making. His works present fragments and vignettes, at times loaded with dynamism and danger, and at others with cool and calm; it is striking then, that in both cases, they are painted or drawn in a universal style of detachment, devoid of accentuated marks betraying the significance of one scene or passage over another. Bannister not only likes the pure and fundamental fact of his commonplace subjects, but exults in their commonplace look; they are not viewed through blurred and kaleidoscopic lenses intentionally layered in coded meaning.
It is pertinent to each artist’s strengths, then, that these works, irrespective of their stylistic differences, are convincing alongside one another. This is because both artists are decisive and defiant through the image-making process. Where Coombs confidently relinquishes control in attempts to access his subconscious and thus decides before his consciousness has that the image is complete, Bannister specialises in a vastly differing discipline, prioritising an altogether different type of reproducibility that, while acknowledging the magnificence of the original, seeks to defame it. Both are desirous of achieving something time and again, accepting and revelling in the importance of repetition and experimentation within confines, albeit to aesthetically and, for their personal satisfaction, conceptually differing ends.
But it is clear to the viewer that in both cases stories are suggested and not told and characters are dramatically exposed but not introduced. Each work is raw and sensitive; at their best they are enigmatic, exciting, and proud.
Each work offers a different perspective on and a different understanding of our time. Each is a portal into another world resembling ours; each are semblant.
