Artist: Derek Liddington
Exhibition title: After, before, yesterday, meanwhile, now, you, me, right and left
Venue: Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto, Canada
Date: September 14 – October 27, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Daniel Faria Gallery is pleased to present After, before, yesterday, meanwhile, now, you, me, left and right, Derek Liddington’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.
Standing in front of Dad’s dresser and lamp with picture of his father, I get fixated on a hint of ochre underpainting beneath a frenzy of Derek Liddington’s lime and citron brushwork. The déjà vu is uncanny. I close my eyes and immediately hear the way a handle clacks its faux brass finish against the stopper while I secretly slip a drawer closed, having just riffled through a pile of softly folded underthings. This scene is brown, it’s cream, it’s tan and orange. I sense the flimsy roller blind that has been engaged to shade out the south-facing sun and can make out the soft chatter of the television in the next room. I smell the used Melita coffee filter laying limp and soggy in the kitchen sink downstairs. And yet it is the drawer handle I’m fixated on; its patina worn from years of oily fingertips grasping and grazing it, tugging it to slide the glossy mahogany drawer in and out, to extract and later return the over-washed cotton garments, folded along the same worn lines, over and over again. I sense the languid, rubbery nature of the large leafed vine that droops just within my grasp, and almost taste its chlorophyll centre as my thumb presses it, digging my bitten fingernail in, so that the waxy residue lives for a while underneath its gnarled edge. I try to focus on the entire room and the image disintegrates, breaking into shards of what it isn’t: fragments beyond my reach. I’m trying to tell you why this place is important to me. But I can’t use my voice. It’s the screen behind my eyes that I’m trying to make you see.
These types of sensorial evocations are at the heart of Derek Liddington’s recent body of work. Using paint as a means to layer physical, temporal and emotional associations he has with particular domestic spaces, Liddington’s canvases capture the intimacy of these places, as well as the way his remembrances of them play out in his mind. Basing his palette on a synesthetic response to each scenario, the artist grounds the paintings with a recognizable item – a porcelain bust, a tarnished piece of jewelry, a framed photograph – before splintering it into a kaleidoscopic flurry of his signature mark making. These brushstrokes act like adverbs, modifying or amplifying the passage of time, motion in the memory, or the impression of the event. The specifics of the scene remain below the surface and we the viewers are left to feel the echo of their trace, rippling before us like a cloud of the thing they once were. Here, Liddington asks how ephemerality can be coaxed into standing still, how gesture can be retained in two dimensions, and how seemingly prosaic recollections come to retain a lasting effect.
-Rhiannon Vogl
Derek Liddington (b. 1981) obtained his MFA from the University of Western Ontario and BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Recent solo exhibitions include The body will always bend before it breaks, the tower will always break before it bends, at Art Gallery of York University, Toronto and Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge (2017), It wasn’t until we closed our eyes that we could finally see what was there all along, at AKA artist-run, Saskatoon (2015), Reclining Nude, Sitting Fruit at Daniel Faria Gallery (2015), and The Sun has Always Set From East to West, curated by Denise Markonish for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche (2014). Liddington was recently included in group shows Longevity or a lack Therof at the MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie (2018) and Rehearsal for Objects Lie on a Table at The Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Toronto (2016). Liddington’s work has been shown at Art Berlin Contemporary (2013) and NADA New York (2014). Liddington has been the recipient of numerous grants, including the Emerging Artist Grant from the Toronto Arts Council and the Emerging Artist Grant from the Ontario Arts Council.
Derek Liddington, After, before, yesterday, meanwhile, now, you, me, right and left, 2018, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Derek Liddington, After, before, yesterday, meanwhile, now, you, me, right and left, 2018, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Derek Liddington, A windows ledge with ripening tomatoes on a day I cannot remember, 2018
Derek Liddington, A windows ledge with ripening tomatoes on a day I cannot remember, 2018 (detail)
Derek Liddington, After, before, yesterday, meanwhile, now, you, me, right and left, 2018, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Derek Liddington, After, before, yesterday, meanwhile, now, you, me, right and left, 2018, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Derek Liddington, Mom’s dresser with necklace (I think) and hidden pornography, 2018
Derek Liddington, Mom’s dresser with necklace (I think) and hidden pornography, 2018 (detail)
Derek Liddington, Dad’s dresser and lamp with picture of his father, 2018
Derek Liddington, Dad’s dresser and lamp with picture of his father, 2018 (detail)
Derek Liddington, After, before, yesterday, meanwhile, now, you, me, right and left, 2018, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Derek Liddington, My grandfather’s grapevine two years after growing my own, 2018
Derek Liddington, House plant next to window with lots of natural light, 2018
Derek Liddington, House plant next to window with lots of natural light, 2018 (detail)
Derek Liddington, After, before, yesterday, meanwhile, now, you, me, right and left, 2018, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Derek Liddington, After, before, yesterday, meanwhile, now, you, me, right and left, 2018, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Derek Liddington, Her feet, her skin, my hands and her feet, 2018
Derek Liddington, Her feet, her skin, my hands and her feet, 2018
Derek Liddington, I looked up and there it was. I looked down and there it was, 2018
Derek Liddington, I looked up and there it was. I looked down and there it was, 2018
Derek Liddington, After, before, yesterday, meanwhile, now, you, me, right and left, 2018, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Derek Liddington, A vine molded in clay and cast in bronze from a memory experienced when I was 12 and forgotten when I was 36, 2018
Derek Liddington, A vine molded in clay and cast in bronze from a memory experienced when I was 12 and forgotten when I was 36, 2018 (detail)
Derek Liddington, A vine molded in clay and cast in bronze from a memory experienced when I was 12 and forgotten when I was 36, 2018 (detail)
Derek Liddington, After, before, yesterday, meanwhile, now, you, me, right and left, 2018, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Derek Liddington, My grandfather’s grapevine two years after growing my own, 2018
Derek Liddington, My grandfather’s grapevine two years after growing my own, 2018 (detail)
Derek Liddington, After, before, yesterday, meanwhile, now, you, me, right and left, 2018, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Derek Liddington, A vine molded in clay and cast in bronze from a memory experienced when I was 12 and forgotten when I was 36, 2018 (detail)
Derek Liddington, I couldn’t tell if it was orange or red but it was more clear to me than his face, 2018
Derek Liddington, I couldn’t tell if it was orange or red but it was more clear to me than his face, 2018 (detail)