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Max Gimson

MA work

Signs of Rot on Thurleigh Avenue

The degree show is a series of small-to-large oil paintings on canvas consisting of parochial subject matter, placing importance on the gestural and incidental qualities of the medium of paint.

Info

  • MA Degree

    School

    School of Arts & Humanities

    Programme

    MA Painting, 2019

  • My paintings use the fireplace as an antiquated vessel or threshold, the locus from which smoke and fire depart, and with them an obfuscation of half-memories, dreams and echoes of subconscious imagery.

    Similar to staring into a fire and conjuring hallucinations from one’s own imagination, I attempt to develop form, narrative and structure in my work within the physical and incidental act of painting.

    In one instance three large, indeterminable bird-like creatures exist as a glowing orange mass of painted gestures and in the next they are rendered as passive, ornamental voyeurs from the corner of a room. In another painting thick, black smoke bellows from an open hearth and in the next it surrounds the viewer as they are situated within the fire.

    Like cupping smoke in one's hands and then looking inside to see it dissipate into the atmosphere, the paintings consist of momentary passages of clarity within temporally shifting painterly gestures – internal logic always teetering between figurative description and abstractions.

  • Degrees

  • BA Fine Art: Painting, University of Brighton, 2012
  • Exhibitions

  • 'Abracadabra', Assembly House, Leeds, 2019; 'Crossroad', Hoxton 253 Project Space, London, 2019; 'Meshes Of The Afternoon', Courtyard Gallery 1, Royal College of Art, London, 2019; 'COLLEGE', House of Vans, London, 2019; 'The Ghosts Are In The House', Chopping Block Gallery, London, 2018; 'Painting[Now]', Studio One Gallery, London, 2017; 'Speak, Clown! **** Part Four', FOLD gallery, London, 2013; 'Max Gimson & Anne Kellens', Galerie d'YS, Brussels, 2016; 'Susan', Neue Froth Kunsthalle, Brighton, 2013; 'Through Tomorrow's Eyes', BEEP, Wales' International Contemporary Painting Prize, Swansea, 2012