Paul Merrick combines painting with sculpture and the made with the ready-made. Investigating colour, materiality, and architectural and spatial arrangement in relationship to the history of Painting, Merrick's recent work is the result of a sustained interrogation of painting through the found object. In a new body of work Merrick has drawn upon colour – coded variations of standard 4 x 4 foot units of plasterboard. Selecting each board from a standardised industrial lexicon of building materials, he creates ‘surrogate’ Colour Field paintings, which are then punctuated by collages cut from an ongoing archive of National
In a new body of work Merrick has drawn upon colour – coded variations of standard 4 x 4 foot units of plasterboard. Selecting each board from a standardised industrial lexicon of building materials, he creates ‘surrogate’ Colour Field paintings, which are then punctuated by collages cut from an ongoing archive of National Geographic and Wallpaper magazines. Delicately pinned to each board are faded pseudo-scientific photographs of foreign and exotic plants (monolithic Cacti and smaller species of desert flora). Grouped and pinned in faded constellations and pitched against images of mountains and wilderness –The Great Outdoors- alongside the more contemporary escapology of Wallpaper Magazine’s luxurious Modernist interiors. Merrick’s collages combine nostalgia for the global reportage of the past in dialogic compositions with images and motifs of style and decadence; creating pictorial iconographies and mythological narratives. Set upon metallic surfaces and pastel hues that reflect back America as consumed through the eyes of a working class Britain of the 1970’s and 80’s.
Merrick’s collages combine nostalgia for the global reportage of the past in dialogic compositions with images and motifs of style and decadence; creating pictorial iconographies and mythological narratives. Set upon metallic surfaces and pastel hues that reflect back America as consumed through the eyes of a working class Britain of the 1970’s and 80’s.
