Andrew North at South Parade

Artist: Andrew North

Exhibition title: Surfacing

Venue: South Parade, London, UK

Date: April 6 – May 13, 2023

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and South Parade, London

South Parade is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Leicestershire based painter Andrew North.

North paints on a variety of surfaces: board, canvas, hessian and polypropylene, encompassing themes of memory, time and place. Rural and urban landscapes, architecture, nature and sometimes figures are motifs that reoccur. His work moves between moments of representation and abstraction in a painting practice that involves the entirety of picture making; from stretcher construction to framing. Often overpainted, cropped, punctured or texturised, the pictures probe the foundations of painting. Genre and narrative, pictorial space and expressive gesture, form and line, and the emotive quality of colour and surface texture. Fading and transitory, the works arise from a sustained observation and lived experience, slipping between an observation of the world and engaged picture making, with an authenticity that transcends autobiography.

For his show at South Parade, North presents a selection of recent work. Untitled (2013 – 2023) acts as a cornerstone to the exhibition. The painting started in his Glasgow studio in 2013 as an abstract image, which introduced the method of encaustic into his practice – an ancient method whereby wax and pigment are fused onto a surface with heat. Being ever present in studios over ten years, Untitled (2013 – 2023) has acted like a filter for ideas and reflections. The wax surface enabled paint to be readily removed or manipulated long after application, thus subtraction became as important to the work as addition. Upon viewing, the veiled oil paint and translucency of the encaustic wax reveal different states of the painting: the viscosity and tended surface suggest the work as both painting and as object. The surface loaded, the picture clarified and resolved. There is a duality to the painting: it is weighted by a personal significance yet light in its reductive and subtle method of picture making.

Andrew North (b. 1988) lives and works in Leicestershire. After completing his BFA at The Glasgow School of Art, North went on to study at The University of Cambridge and The Royal Drawing School. Recent selected exhibitions include The Room, South Parade (London, 2022), Kill or Cure, Wolfson College (Cambridge, 2022), Between Shan Shui, 1974 Club (London, 2022), A Moment or Two, The Bothy Gallery (Cirencester, 2021) and Dibujando y Pintando, 48 Calle Iturribide (Bilbao, 2018). North recently graduated from the Royal Drawing School (Intensive Programme, 2022). Since 2021, North has been a Visiting Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University.