The Guests
Kit Poulson
Kit Poulson works with a variety of media, but painting is at the core of his practice.
His painting is a balance of speed and reflection, with works emerging over long periods (years rather than months) but formed from a series of quickly executed episodes, which overlay, and sometimes argue with each other. Eventually a balance is achieved, reflecting memories and traces of all these approaches. He works on several things at once, and spends as much time in the studio looking as painting.
The sound works grow from his interest in writing, and attempts to create equivalent images to those found in his paintings, using voice and drifts and shifts of sound. As he paints, Poulson often finds words and phrases get stuck in his head, circling round and round, sometimes snowballing into full blown stories, or sometimes breaking down into patterns of sound.
You know that table at a wedding where all the difficult to place get put, the awkward squad, the odd bods and the distant, the disapproved of… Invited but now how do we all get on together? Then they get talking and all sorts of things begin to emerge.
The Guests explored the feeling that all these works contain diverse fragments of the artist’s mind and of the particular moment they were constructed. Later these strange objects might not be easy to reconcile into unified statements, but rather exist as a constellation, individual orbits pulling and pushing at each other, generating strange convergences.
The exhibition was part of the South West Showcase, a recurring open call platform (est 2013), showcasing artists from across the South West region. The showcase aims to support contemporary artists working and living in the South West through a year long programme of mentoring and support with an exhibition outcome; presenting a long-term commitment to profiling and supporting the practices of artists in this region.
