STORE

Tom Gidley

15th January – 21st February 2004

92 Hoxton Street, London, N1 6LP
www.storegallery.co.uk

STORE is pleased to present a solo exhibition by the artist Tom Gidley. Gidley's work explores the gap between the internal and the external world and the conflicting feelings of security and anxiety that arise from it, in order to suggest that each realm is as illusory as the other, and equally hard to navigate.

‘In The Trees’ is a major new video work and Gidley’s first narrative-based piece. Shot in the gloom of an autumnal day, the video features a parka-clad man whose solitary walk through a forest is disrupted by pronouncements about his future. These apparently emanate from a malevolent sparrow, although it is not clear if the voice is that of the fleetingly glimpsed bird, or a projection of the man’s inner demons. Funny, ludicrous and ultimately bleak, ‘In The Trees’ is a vision of hell – one person’s unknowable future presented to them as incontestable, brutal fact.

‘Her Medication’ is an intricate scale model of a local council stairwell, with one startling addition. Filled with plant specimens that thrive in decay and ruin, overtaking wherever allowed, the object is transformed into a strange, lyrical portrait of one person’s psyche. The impoverished modernist structure, an essentially mundane social necessity, becomes an inner space where the thoughts we keep to ourselves, both positive and negative, germinate and linger.

‘It’s Getting Late’ recalls the utopian screenprint posters that circulated widely in the late 60s to mid 70s, particularly in North America. Such posters often announced events and gatherings, and proclaimed a desire for social engagement. Gidley's screenprint uses the final paragraph from his unpublished novel ‘Stunning Lofts’ to suggest a very different engagement between the individual and their surroundings. The type twists and turns in on itself as the protagonist describes his state of mind, relating it to features of the area he passes through. Ominous and melancholic, we are left unsure whether it is salvation or doom that follows his journey into a park and the encroaching night.

Tom Gidley was born in Birmingham in 1968. He was educated at Central St. Martins. Since co-founding frieze magazine in 1990, he has exhibited widely both here and abroad.

Tom Gidley would like to thank the following people: Ben Abell, Rachel Atherton, Julian Emens, Ryan Gander, Liam Howe, Martin Hyder, Susannah Hyman, Laura Patch at Laura Patch Flowers.