Nigel Mullins: 21st Century Talismans

Everard Read London

Nigel Mullins: 21st Century Talismans

14 October - 11 November 2016

21st Century Talismans continues Nigel Mullins’ exploration of the futility and profundity of the human experience and endeavour. Poignant, playful and pathetic by turns, the works speak of disintegrating idealism as Mullins serves up heroes and victims, historic moments and iconic objects as contemporary vanitas paintings.

Mullins’ paintings are literally framed as historical images, in old and sometimes decrepit frames, and which contain, or occasionally leak, the visceral sumptuousness of the paint. Even when he is referencing the monochromatic palette of archival photos, the paint is intensely animated and seductive. Thick with extreme impasto and with smeared borders between frame and canvas, his paintings become amulets, sacred artefacts – 21st Century Talismans. 

"I want to present my paintings as superstitious objects with bogus protective powers to bend reality in our favour. My paintings offer somehow to help you. 'Buy you time.' Or 'Reduce insignificance.’ Or 'Guarantee Afterlife.’ The squishy bodily qualities of paint, thick gestures, and sometimes outright messy application, are ideal to evoke a low-tech, talismanic object or fetish and our chaotic and often absurd strategies for controlling the vagaries of chance and guaranteeing a bright future."

- Nigel Mullins

View the exhibition catalogue here.