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The curatorial and editorial project for systems, non-objective and reductive artists working in the UK

Website: Chestnuts Design

Making Painting ++  |  Philip Cole


Phoenix Art Space, Brighton, 30 November 2024 to 23 February 2025



A review by Geoff Hands

©Copyright Patrick Morrissey and Clive Hancock  All rights reserved.

It’s an early Thursday evening. The sun has gone down and rush hour brings extra road traffic past the Phoenix Window Gallery. The rain has stopped but we await a storm fast approaching. In this dynamic of everyday life, where change oscillates between calm and agitation, any meditative respite is more than welcome. Looking at paintings often, though not always, holds the promise of ruminative contemplation. One particular painting absorbs me beyond the others, but I shall return to it later as I want to speak more generally about this impressive exhibition.


I should be getting home soon after a day in my Phoenix studio but I am compelled to take another look at ‘Making Painting ++’. I have looked at the show several times by now, strolling along this elongated gallery space prepped, knowing that I am always intrigued by Philip Cole’s paintings, and that I can just enjoy the spectacle. Nor have I had to jump on a train up to London to see some excellent contemporary art. Not that there’s little of note here in Brighton, it’s just that there are too few gallery spaces available for the wealth of talent to display their work. Thank goodness for the Phoenix Art Space and for the extended duration of this exhibition.

Cole’s work has always made me stop to ponder and to mull over - a visit to his studio always a special treat. I first became aware of his work in a group show that we were both included in at the Phoenix Art Space back in 2014 (‘20 Painters’, curated by Patrick O’Donnell and June Frickleton) and I feel the imagery in my memory still. The notable change and development that has come about in Cole’s extended project over the past decade includes the refinement of a constructive and almost covert making process with his chosen materials. It’s a hard-won engagement with the potency of a seemingly uncomplicated yet sophisticated colour usage that exudes a self-confidence he would probably deny.


I sense an honest, workaday studio practice that translates into something most elegant and graceful. Simple imagery that is as complex, potentially, as a busy, gestural, abstract expressionist enterprise might aspire to. Colour is always key as he is very much deliberative rather than dramatic or overtly emotional in his usage of that magically visual element of the painterly medium - even if we can also understand colour, scientifically, as the result of light interacting with the photoreceptors in the eye. These aspects may sound like contradictions but it’s more of an inherent yin/yang faculty and aptitude held within these works that makes them so impressive and memorable.


Cole attests to this when he states that:

“In the completed work, evidence of the painter/maker is notably almost absent. In their ‘hard-edged-ness’, the paintings might be misunderstood as digitally created but the element of craft in their making attests to a more analogue approach. I have found moments of calm in the mundane repetitiveness of construction.”


Yet despite the admiration I clearly have for Cole’s work I do still feel some anxiousness in my understanding, and attraction towards, this category of systems-type art. It’s a felt experience that, naively, I do not always expect from geometric-type painting. Sometimes I struggle with pure, flat, rectangular, seemingly simplistic, reductive, geometric abstraction as I (mistakenly) search for an external subject matter. It’s a very personal thing that irks me. Not in an ideas/intellectual sense but, maybe, aesthetically. But take the conceptual and ideas framework away and I still admire these works as quite beautiful objects of desire. This is why it is so necessary to see such works in the flesh. The process and activity of looking, of imbibing, such works becomes the understanding - even if just on a level of feeling and subjectivity. Any discomfort is from my own limited awareness and I eventually understand, if I relax a little, that Cole’s works explain themselves if you allow them to and they enlighten if one is open to the experience.


The works are both timeless and contemporary. Cole’s paintings are certainly on trend with regard to political and societal themes, but this is balanced with expertise in simply making imagery to a high standard - not always demonstrated by some art works that get into the most prestigious venues or win prizes. For a context, Cole’s exhibition statement (also available from his website) is certainly clear enough where he explains his interest in materials and processes, polyester resins (petrochemicals), ecology, necessary commercial products, packaging and registration marks - seemingly marginal and incidental pointers to modern day life and industry.


And he further explains:

“The Anthropocene age is marked by the prevalence of plastic, and my work seeks to underscore the importance of this significant material formed from the remains of organic life. My considered use of plastic is controversial but intentional in order to elevate its status and that of the work. The production of something permanent is in contrast to the use of these materials to construct and to package temporary and throwaway vessels.”

And the painting that totally grabbed my attention? Having walked through the whole display of close to forty works I reached the café, now closed, where the gallery spotlights have been replaced by the streetlights from outside, to see In the world and of the world (2023) (above), with subtle strips of shadow cast across its surface by the window frame. It’s not necessarily a better work than any of the others in the exhibition, but the environmental feel is quite different. It’s somehow more homely and less showy than the contemporary art that galleries usually tend to promote. This painting is truly in the world, where nothing is necessarily perfect or deemed ideal. The most successful paintings connect to both the inner and the outer self; to what is real and concrete, and to the subjective experience of being with a work of art.


Viewing by appointment until 13 February, via the Phoenix office. Phone: +44 (0)1273 603700 or message Philip Cole via Instagram or 07801 014961.

From 13 - 23 February, open Wednesday to Sunday, 12pm - 5pm. Entry is via main reception.


Colecorner - https://colecorner.com/



Geoff Hands is a painter who augments his practice and thinking about visual creative practice by reviewing exhibitions. He is based at the Phoenix Art Space in Brighton, UK.



All images © the artist, photography by Bernard Mills.