Taymour Grahne Projects is pleased to present Contemporary Domesticity II, a group exhibition exploring domesticity and its multiple representations and meanings in today’s world. By bringing nine international, multigenerational artists together, the show presents diverse interpretations of our shared domestic experience.
Address: 4 Cromwell Place (Wing Gallery), London SW7 2JE
Opening Hours: Wednesday April 10 - Saturday April 13 from 11am to 7pm and Sunday April 14 from 11am to 4pm
Featured artists: Jess Allen, RF Alvarez, Richard Burton, Thomas Cameron, Minyoung Kim, Gail Spaien, Tanya Traboulsi, Tim Wilson, and Aaron Zulpo.
In a rapidly changing world, the concept of domesticity has undergone profound transformations. While traditional notions of home often evoke images of a comfortable physical dwelling, its meaning has evolved to encompass a broader spectrum of experiences, narratives, and identities. By looking deeper into this theme, each artist offers a glimpse into the complexities of modern domestic life by interrogating themes such as urban living, migration, intimacy, identity and the feeling of belonging.
RF Alvarez’ (B.1988) figurative paintings capture quiet moments of everyday life at home. His works are characterized by a nocturnal colour palette and evocative scenes that blend personal memory with romantic allegory. Using a process of dry-brushing paint onto raw linen – and borrowing stylistic techniques from Old Masters – Alvarez creates luminous images of queer joy, revelry and contemplation; countering a historical narrative of queer alienation and erasure in the American West. With deep family roots in both Texas and Mexico, Alvarez uses visions of friendship, indulgence and tenderness to juxtapose with Southern machismo – illuminating the vulnerability that can hide beneath the steely façade of masculinity and the societies it creates.
Thomas Cameron’s (B.1992) paintings document fleeting moments of urban life and offer an insight into his observations of the human condition. He is particularly interested in the notion of isolation and solitude, and the way in which this disposition is enhanced by the populated, yet disconnected, business of city life. Vignettes of everyday urban life are observed and captured with a heightened sense of tension and surveillance, conveying an emotional response to the often-melancholic atmosphere of cities. Cameron depicts public spaces that often have the effect of anonymising the people who pass through them, those who become consumers, commuters, workers etcetera. His work points towards the ongoing conveyer belt of consumerism, and his compositional choices highlight this. By defamiliarizing the familiar, Cameron calls into question what we take for granted as 'normal' and encourages us to look more closely, to question how we live and examine our relationship with the everyday.
Aaron Zulpo (B.1985) has been capturing city life since he first moved to urban areas like Chicago and New York. His fascination lies in the close proximity and multitude of people residing in glass structures, where their lives are on display. Zulpo endeavours to convey the sensation of numerous disparate narratives unfolding simultaneously, using the backdrop and visual devices of modern architecture. The painting featured in this exhibition showcases the John Hancock Tower, the tallest and one of the most marvellous buildings on Chicago's Magnificent Mile. The skyscraper was finished in 1968 and briefly held the title of being the second tallest building in the world. The structure narrows as it gets higher and has fantastic crossbeams creating Xs across the structure. This building has always been one of Zulpo’s favourites.
For Richard Burton (B.1984), the notion of world building acts as his framework for creating a visual reality. Faced with moving vessels, car interiors and stacked seating the viewer is often positioned as a passenger. He seeks to induce a feeling of seduction mixed with claustrophobia — a disturbing blend of excitement and dread. The tropes of sci-fi that interest him are dystopian: malign technology, social control, the numbing of human instincts. Within this he is always looking for ways to bring about emotional distance and a sense of inertia; the kind of banality suggestive of lounges and waiting rooms.
Tim Wilson’s (B.1970) modestly sized paintings embrace pre-modernist tendencies of representation, holding them up as a necessary model for seeing today. As though viewed through the looking glass, the phantoms of Vermeer, Fantin-Latour, and Vuillard filter uneasily into a spectrum culled from an infinite flow of television, films, and backlit screens. Despite this dichotomy, these quotidian motifs, located in provisional spaces such as stairways, foyers, bedside tables, drawing rooms, and motels, attempt to slow the viewer down, providing them with an intimate space for contemplation. In this way, Wilson is attempting to construct a transcendental hearth for the viewer—a meditative feedback loop in which history and meaning collapse.
Tanya Traboulsi (B.1976) touches upon migration and her memories of home. She mentions: ‘When I left Beirut in 1983, at the age of 7, I took with me fragments of memories: the scents of orange and jasmine blossoms, geranium on our balcony, distant traffic noises, sea salt in my hair, birds singing every evening in the tree in front of my bedroom window, kids playing in our street's schoolyard, the sorrowful chants of mourning for a deceased neighbour, the smell of freshly baked bread from the neighbourhood's tiny bakery, and the smell of burning trash that children of my generation are so familiar with.’ However, the memories of Traboulsi’s Beirut home remained the most vivid, with the warm afternoon light entering through a small bathroom window, the soothing calm on Sunday afternoons, the pleasant aroma of freshly washed clothes and brewed coffee and the peculiar smell of mothballs in her parents’ closet. After having been away for more than a decade, she longed for a sense of belonging. When the war finally ended, Traboulsi returned to Beirut, and found her family home unchanged, holding on to the memories of their departure.
For Gail Spaien (B.1958), a painting is a site of connection; an object which transmits emotion from one person to another. Spaien is of a lineage of artists who think craft and beauty shape and build a more relational world. The images in her paintings are of observed and imagined places where one can be in relationship with others and the world and the self. Made in a meticulous way, attentively composed, the paintings highlight actions of slowness and care. The use of scale, proportion, pattern and subtly shifting colour are visual elements that create a slight perceptual and physical dislocation, somewhat similar to encountering a one hundred year old bonsai tree. These paintings are places where many kinds of time overlap. Concrete and ephemeral. Phenomenon and mirage. Places at the intersection of time and timelessness.
Jess Allen (B.1966) explores absence and presence, emptiness, memory, and the concept of time through her practice. Areas of nothingness found within shadows, or across walls or sofas are very important, and they give a breathing space to the subject, but they are also symbolic of a psychological space. Light and shade represent time, both present and past, through their connection with a specific angle of the sun's rays, and the axis of the earth. There is often a feeling of a past moment being caught. Viewed in the present, the paintings suggest the feeling of the continued presence of 'someone' in our thoughts, minds, and hearts, even in their absence. She mentions, “Shadows interest me immensely because they are silent and ephemeral. They are evocative, and like memories, they are a bit hazy. In a way, they are a minimal representation of our physical selves.” Encouraging free association and reflection, she describes the shadow figures as being "like the soul”, or a "visual echo" of the presence of someone beyond the picture plane both physically, but also "in time''.
Minyoung Kim (B.1989) explores ideas around the surreal and the uncanny. Mischievous feline protagonists feature throughout the works and are often used to subvert or accelerate dangerous and precarious situations. Everyday scenarios are imbued with animated surrealism and dark humour. Featuring recurring characters such as black cats, snakes, mermaids, fish and anthropomorphic food items, Kim’s imaginary fables take place in domestic spaces as well as moonlit landscapes and oceans. Though seemingly safe and idyllic, mystery and danger lurk around the corner, as depicted by shadows cast by hand-held knives, slithering snakes, and strange mythological creatures and rituals. Kim’s self-proclaimed “creepy-cute” scenes evoke laughter with “bizarre, eerie, mysterious feelings” as a form of visual self-reflection and expression of her innermost thoughts and anxieties.
